Hydrogen separator could power fuel cells from city gas

We've seen power hacks that allow hybrid vehicles to energize your domicile, but even that isn't enough to change how entire cities receive electricity. Now, however, the Japan Fine Ceramics Center (JFCC) has collaborated with Noritake Co. and a few other firms to develop "a high-performance hydrogen separation membrane made from ceramic materials" that can purportedly "attach directly to a gas pipeline to supply hydrogen for fuel cells using city gas as the source." Additionally, the the reaction to generate hydrogen can be carried out at a temperature of around "300-degrees lower than normal," and while current estimations are suggesting that cities won't be powered via this method until closer to 2020, there's always the option for a gigantic solar field to fill the void in the time being. [Warning: read link requires subscription]

[alex @ May 28th 2007 10:27AM]

City gas is primarily CH4. The reaction to separate the H usually leaves CO or CO2. So, instead of generating CO or CO2 from the tailpipe, I can generate it at home instead? Maybe, using inline one-way molecular filters, we can pump that back up to the city to a central sequestration station?

The link is behind a wall so hard to know if this is really useful or not.

[Chris @ May 28th 2007 2:08PM]

The useful thing about stationary (and central) generating, the CO and CO2 generated can be reclaimed safely. One could use a water-gas shift reactor to reform CO into more H2 and CO2, and the CO2 could be reclaimed with biomass, and eventually processed into fermentable sugars and then into ethanol for fuel or another H2 source.

This separator, while not revolutionary, would be a nice step in the right direction. Steam reforming is the current method of getting H2 from natural gas, and it ironically requires a combustion reaction for heat.

[Chris @ May 28th 2007 9:00PM]

Actually, the more I look at it, I think this is just a parallel plate catalytic wall reactor. This is not new, the University of Minn has been playing with these since 2001, for this exact use.

In the schematic, you can see "End plate power lead" which probably means they use an electric heater instead of methane combustion. "300-degrees cooler" is because it is catalyzed and not a traditional open-flame reactor.

Meh, nothing new to see here.