WP 3: Valorization: High pressure H2 and CO2 delivery

Sorption-Enhanced Reforming (SER) and Electrochemical Hydrogen Compression (EHC) are the two technologies of the valorization part in the CONVERGE concept that will be coupled together to upgrade the gasifier syngas prior to the methanol synthesis. SER is a modified reforming technology with integrated high temperature CO2 capture which allows to convert C1+ hydrocarbons to hydrogen in one single step by the use of a solid CO2 sorbent, allowing to enhance the hydrogen production. EHC is an emerging technology that allows to both purify and compress hydrogen. It uses proton conducting membranes that block hydrogen gas, but allow fast proton conductivity. An external power source drives the electric current and the internal hydrogen mass transport direction, controlling the hydrogen gas flow and the pressure.


By integrating the two technologies, the gasifier syngas will be upgraded by the conversion of C1+ and CO producing a hydrogen-rich reformate gas that will be purified, compressed, and mixed at the required ratio with the separated CO2 for the methanol synthesis. WP3 will develop further the core materials of the SER and EHC technologies for their validation, and carry out the integration of the two technologies through a test campaign in relevant operating conditions, to reach TRL5.

Objectives

The main objective of WP3 is to validate the integration of the SER and EHC technologies at TRL5 in relevant operating
conditions adapted to the CONVERGE concept with the following specific targets:

  1. Reduce the energy consumption for hydrogen production, CO2 removal and compression to 1.2 MJ/kg CO2
  2. Extract and compress H2 at >99.5% purity, 50 bar and at a primary energy consumption of 12 MJ/kg H2
  3. Operate the SER and EHC for 500 hours on C1-C6 containing syngas feed at 10 Nm3/hr H2 production
    The following sub-objectives will be pursued:
    • Further improve the SER performance of previously developed CO2 sorbent
    • Develop new catalytic materials suited for the conversion of hydrocarbon mixtures generated in the gasification stage
    of the CONVERGE concept
    • Validate the performance of the developed materials for relevant CONVERGE operating conditions with feed gases
    containing C1-C6 hydrocarbons and up to 5 vol% glycerol
    • Design and engineer a 20 kg H2/day EHC purification/compression unit for integration with the existing SER prototype
    installed at the IFE-HyNor Hydrogen Technology Center
    • Theoretical modeling of two EHP/EHC stack configurations: 1) EHP (dedicated low pressure purification) and EHC
    (compression) module in cascaded configuration and 2) an integrated EHP/EHC stack simultaneously purifying and
    compressing hydrogen.
    • Optimize membrane/catalyst material configuration and validate the performance of the EHC cell for relevant
    reformate gas from the SER prototype
    • Operate a test campaign of theSER-EHC integration at the IFE-HyNor Hydrogen Technology Center with an emulated
    relevant syngas feed composition
    • Generate process data about the SER-EHC integration for use in the techno-economic and life-cycle analyses (WP5)
    and in the business case study (WP6)