Effect of inlet conditions on the performance of a palladium membrane reactor

Palladium membrane reactors (PMR) are used to remove tritium and other hydrogen isotopes from impurities such as tritiated methane and tritiated water. This paper investigates the effect of inlet conditions on the performance of a PMR. A set of experiments were run to determine, independently, the effect of inlet compositions and residence time on performance. Also, the experiments were designed to determine if the injected form of hydrogen (CH₄ or H₂O) effects performance. Results show that the PMR operates at optimal hydrogen recovery with a broad range of inlet compositions and performance is shown to increase with increased residence time. PMR performance is shown to be independent of whether hydrogen is injected in the form of CH₄ or H₂O