(732e) A Novel Au/NaY Catalytic Membrane for Preferential Oxidation of CO From Hydrogen

Proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFC) have several advantageous such as its low operating temperature and high energy efficiency. However, the Pt anodes are easily poisoned by CO. It is critical to eliminate CO from the H2-rich gas stream before fed into PEMFC. Preferential oxidation of CO (CO-PROX) is considered as a simple and economic method for CO removal. Over the past few years, the observation in striking catalytic activation of nanosized gold towards CO selective oxidation has motivated many researchers working on the new catalysts. Many efforts were made to improve the catalytic efficiency for CO-PROX. In this paper, we developed a novel catalytic membrane for CO-PROX, in which a polycrystalline NaY (FAU-type) zeolite membrane supported on a porous ceramic substrate was loaded with nanosized Au particles. When H2-rich gas containing a small amount of CO diffuses through the catalytic membrane, CO could be preferentially oxidized due to the selective catalytic activation for Au particles and relatively low diffusion rate for CO molecules. The catalytic configuration was expected to have high efficiency because the reactive components can well reach the activation sites. We have demonstrated that the catalytic membranes had excellent catalytic performance for selective oxidation of CO. CO/H2 molar ratio in the permeate side decreased with the increasing of operating temperature in the range of 80-200 ^oC. At 200 ^oC, almost no CO was detected from the permeate stream of a catalytic membrane for the feed containing 0.67% CO, 1.33% O2, 32.67% H2 and He in balance.