Research Trends of Polybenzimidazole-based Membranes for Hydrogen Purification Applications

Abstract

As the demand for eco-friendly energy increases to overcome the energy shortage and environmental pollution crisis, hydrogen economy has been proposed as a potential solution. Accordingly, an economical and efficient hydrogen production is considered to be an essential industrial process. Research on applying hydrogen separation membranes for H-2/CO2 separation to the production of highly concentrated hydrogen by purifying H-2 and capturing CO2 simultaneously from synthetic gas produced by gasification is in progress nowadays. In high temperature environments, the membrane separation process using glassy polymeric membrane with H-2 selectivity has the potential for CO2 capture performance, and is an energy and cost effective system since polybenzimicazole (PBI)-based separators show excellent chemical and mechanical stability under high-temperature operation conditions. Thus, the development of high-performance PBI hydrogen separators has been rapidly progressing in recent years. This overview focuses on the recent developments of PBI-based membranes including structure modified, cross-linked, blended and carbonized membranes for applications to the industrial hydrogen separation process.