Gasification of coal when associated with carbon dioxide capture and sequestration has the potential to provide low-cost as well as low-carbon hydrogen for electric power, fuels or chemicals production. The key element to the success of this concept is inexpensive, effective separation of hydrogen from carbon dioxide in synthesis gas. Many studies indicate that membrane technology is one of the most, if not the most, economical means of accomplishing separation
however, the advancement of hydrogen separation membrane technology is hampered by the absence of experience or demonstration that the technology is effective economically and environmentally at larger scales. While encouraging performance has been observed at bench scale (less than 12 lb/d hydrogen), it would be imprudent to pursue a largescale demonstration without testing at least one intermediate scale, such as 100 lb/d hydrogen. Among its many gasifiers, the Energy & Environmental Research Center is home to the transport reactor demonstration unit (TRDU), a unit capable of firing 200?500 lb/hr of coal to produce 400 scfm of synthesis gas containing more than 200 lb/d of hydrogen. The TRDU and associated downstream processing equipment has demonstrated the capability of producing a syngas over a wide range of temperatures and contaminant levels ? some of which approximate conditions of commercial-scale gasifiers. Until this activity, however, the maximum pressure of the TRDU? s product syngas was 120 psig, well below the 400+ psig pressures of existing large gasifiers. This activity installed a high-temperature compressor capable of accepting the range of TRDU products up to 450�F and compressing them to 500 psig, a pressure comparable to some large scale gasifiers. Thus, with heating or cooling downstream of the TRDU compressor, the unit is now able to present a near-raw to clean gasifier synthesis gas containing more than 100 lb/d of hydrogen at up to 500 psig over a wide range of temperatures to hydrogen separation membranes or other equipment for development and demonstration.