Worldwide energy shortages combined with the political instability in countries producing much of the world's oil supplies have stimulated enhanced efforts in the US to produce energy from renewable sources such as wind, solar and hydropower. One of the often overlooked renewable energy sources is the waste disposed by industrial societies. In the USA, the major sources include agricultural wastes (crop residues and animal wastes), municipal solid wastes, municipal biosolids, and industrial wastes. To put the importance of just one of these waste streams into perspective, as reported by the USEPA, the MSW generated in the year 2000 was about 162 million tons. Using a heating value of 4000 Btu/lb, this quantity of MSW has the energy equivalent of about thirty 500 MW power plants. Some of the other waste streams represent even larger energy potential. If efficient processes can be developed, these waste materials can be converted into a useful product such as syngas (a mixture of mostly H2 and CO) using steam reforming gasification.

Integrated Environmental Technologies (IET) has been developing a plasma based gasification system to recover energy values from waste materials using steam reforming gasification to produce clean syngas. The IET Plasma Enhanced Melter™ (PEM™) has been demonstrated on a wide variety of waste streams. These applications have included nuclear waste, medical waste, municipal waste, and many varieties of hazardous industrial wastes.

In most past applications, IET has combusted the syngas in internal combustion engines to produce electrical power. Another use of the syngas is to produce hydrogen. Separated hydrogen then has many uses in the chemical and petroleum industry or as a vehicle fuel in future transportation systems such as envisioned by the hydrogen transportation programs in California, Texas and New York.

This paper describes the results of a joint effort between IET and Air Products to extract the hydrogen content in the syngas into a separate high purity gas stream using Air Products PRISM™ H2 PSA. A series of five tests were conducted and syngas and hydrogen gas samples were obtained and analyzed. The syngas contained 40% to 50% H2 in addition to CO, CO2, and N2. Hydrogen purity was also determined on each sample.

The proof of concept tests clearly demonstrated that economically viable hydrogen recovery fractions were demonstrated on two feed matrices with hydrogen purity exceeding 99.9%. Process modifications were identified that would further improve hydrogen recovery. The tests unequivocally demonstrated that high purity hydrogen can be produced from syngas produced from renewable waste materials using steam reforming gasification in a PEM™ and an Air Products PSA.