Exciting Project to Create Increased Temperature Resistant Palladium-based Membranes Gets Grant from the Research Council of Norway

New year, new possibilities! Hydrogen Mem-Tech is thrilled that the Research Council of Norway has granted the application for an exciting innovation project to increase durability and secure recycling of the precious palladium membranes used in our separators.

The transition to a hydrogen economy is seen as an essential step towards a zero-carbon society. The Palladium (Pd) based membrane separation technology for hydrogen separation, commercialized by Hydrogen Mem-Tech, will play a part in enabling this transition. 

Together with our excellent project partners, K. A. Rasmussen, SINTEF Industry and SINTEF Manufacturing, we are working towards a new composite palladium-based membrane with a higher resistance to defect formation at temperatures above 450 °C. The new project is called INTERPALL (project number 355921) and is supported with up to 6.9 million NOK from the Research Council of Norway.

“The development of a new composite membrane will go hand in hand with the development of a closed loop recycling scheme. The precious metals used in the metallic films are scarce and critical materials and it is vital that these are preserved,” says Hydrogen Mem-Tech’s product developer Marie Døvre Strømsheim.

Palladium has the innate quality that only hydrogen can pass through the material. Hence Pd-based films are used as membranes for hydrogen separation and purification. 

“The amount of hydrogen which pass through the film in a given time is near inversely proportional to the thickness of the film. Hence, thinner films are beneficial to increase the throughput of hydrogen,”Strømsheim explains. 

To increase the mechanical strength, and allow for thinner films, composite membranes consisting of a Pd-based film and a porous support is used in the separator. 

However, thinner films are more vulnerable to pinhole formation, with the rate of pinhole formation increasing with temperature. 

Certain user-cases requires a higher operating temperature, such as ammonia cracking and separation.

“The planned innovation is therefore a new composite Pd-based membrane with a higher resistance to defect formation at temperatures above 450 °C,” says Strømsheim.

This will entail developing a modified carrier and novel thin (<5 micron) films with higher robustness towards pinhole formation and hence an increased lifetime. 

You can read more about our ammonia project Pallamonia here to understand how important this process is in relation to hydrogen markets.