Systematic Evaluation of Membrane Materials and Process Design Trade-offs for Hydrogen Deblending

Abstract Hydrogen can play an important role as a fuel or feedstock in various industries, but transportation of hydrogen is challenging. Hydrogen blending with natural gas in existing natural gas pipelines can leverage the existing infrastructure to expand access to hydrogen for unconventional end uses. However, this approach would require on-point separation technologies to deblend the hydrogen from natural gas. This study evaluates the performance of 224 membrane materials, including polymers and carbon molecular sieves, for purity and required area in a single-stage system for hydrogen deblending. A two-stage membrane cascade is optimized for recovery of a target purity, and the costs of hydrogen recovery are estimated. We demonstrate that fuel-grade A hydrogen can be deblended at $0.320 kg–1 H2, but with a recovery of 84%. The costs are found to be most sensitive to the electricity cost and the cost of annualization of capital expenditures. Compared with other hydrogen transport options, the blending–deblending approach is economically favorable for long-distance H2 delivery.