Development of Porous Silicon Nitride Supports for Hydrogen Separation Membranes

Abstract

Hydrogen is regarded as the new generation energy carrier. Hydrogen is mainly made by steam reforming of methane at high temperature. It is well known that the efficiency of this reaction could be improved by selectively separating out hydrogen from the reactor. With this purpose, we have developed hydrogen separation membranes with Si-N ceramics, which can be used at high temperatures. Usually, ceramic membrane is supported by porous ceramic substrates. Important features for substrates are sharp pore size distribution and porosity. So we tried to control the pore size distribution and porosity of porous silicon nitride substrates by reaction sintering.