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On the Potential of Gallium- and Indium-Based Liquid Metal Membranes for Hydrogen Separation

The concept of liquid metal membranes for hydrogen separation, based on gallium or indium, was recently introduced as an alternative to conventional palladium-based membranes. The potential of this class of gas separation materials was mainly attributed to the promise of higher hydrogen diffusivity....

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Autores principales: Rosseau, Leon R. S., Medrano, José A., Bhardwaj, Rajat, Goetheer, Earl L. V., Filot, Ivo A. W., Gallucci, Fausto, van Sint Annaland, Martin
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8780804/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35054601
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/membranes12010075
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author Rosseau, Leon R. S.
Medrano, José A.
Bhardwaj, Rajat
Goetheer, Earl L. V.
Filot, Ivo A. W.
Gallucci, Fausto
van Sint Annaland, Martin
author_facet Rosseau, Leon R. S.
Medrano, José A.
Bhardwaj, Rajat
Goetheer, Earl L. V.
Filot, Ivo A. W.
Gallucci, Fausto
van Sint Annaland, Martin
author_sort Rosseau, Leon R. S.
collection PubMed
description The concept of liquid metal membranes for hydrogen separation, based on gallium or indium, was recently introduced as an alternative to conventional palladium-based membranes. The potential of this class of gas separation materials was mainly attributed to the promise of higher hydrogen diffusivity. The postulated improvements are only beneficial to the flux if diffusion through the membrane is the rate-determining step in the permeation sequence. Whilst this is a valid assumption for hydrogen transport through palladium-based membranes, the relatively low adsorption energy of hydrogen on both liquid metals suggests that other phenomena may be relevant. In the current study, a microkinetic modeling approach is used to enable simulations based on a five-step permeation mechanism. The calculation results show that for the liquid metal membranes, the flux is limited by the dissociative adsorption over a large temperature range, and that the membrane flux is expected to be orders of magnitude lower compared to the membrane flux through pure palladium membranes. Even when accounting for the lower cost of the liquid metals compared to palladium, the latter still outperforms both gallium and indium in all realistic scenarios, in part due to the practical difficulties associated with making liquid metal thin films.
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spelling pubmed-87808042022-01-22 On the Potential of Gallium- and Indium-Based Liquid Metal Membranes for Hydrogen Separation Rosseau, Leon R. S. Medrano, José A. Bhardwaj, Rajat Goetheer, Earl L. V. Filot, Ivo A. W. Gallucci, Fausto van Sint Annaland, Martin Membranes (Basel) Article The concept of liquid metal membranes for hydrogen separation, based on gallium or indium, was recently introduced as an alternative to conventional palladium-based membranes. The potential of this class of gas separation materials was mainly attributed to the promise of higher hydrogen diffusivity. The postulated improvements are only beneficial to the flux if diffusion through the membrane is the rate-determining step in the permeation sequence. Whilst this is a valid assumption for hydrogen transport through palladium-based membranes, the relatively low adsorption energy of hydrogen on both liquid metals suggests that other phenomena may be relevant. In the current study, a microkinetic modeling approach is used to enable simulations based on a five-step permeation mechanism. The calculation results show that for the liquid metal membranes, the flux is limited by the dissociative adsorption over a large temperature range, and that the membrane flux is expected to be orders of magnitude lower compared to the membrane flux through pure palladium membranes. Even when accounting for the lower cost of the liquid metals compared to palladium, the latter still outperforms both gallium and indium in all realistic scenarios, in part due to the practical difficulties associated with making liquid metal thin films. MDPI 2022-01-07 /pmc/articles/PMC8780804/ /pubmed/35054601 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/membranes12010075 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Rosseau, Leon R. S.
Medrano, José A.
Bhardwaj, Rajat
Goetheer, Earl L. V.
Filot, Ivo A. W.
Gallucci, Fausto
van Sint Annaland, Martin
On the Potential of Gallium- and Indium-Based Liquid Metal Membranes for Hydrogen Separation
title On the Potential of Gallium- and Indium-Based Liquid Metal Membranes for Hydrogen Separation
title_full On the Potential of Gallium- and Indium-Based Liquid Metal Membranes for Hydrogen Separation
title_fullStr On the Potential of Gallium- and Indium-Based Liquid Metal Membranes for Hydrogen Separation
title_full_unstemmed On the Potential of Gallium- and Indium-Based Liquid Metal Membranes for Hydrogen Separation
title_short On the Potential of Gallium- and Indium-Based Liquid Metal Membranes for Hydrogen Separation
title_sort on the potential of gallium- and indium-based liquid metal membranes for hydrogen separation
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8780804/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35054601
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/membranes12010075
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