Infrastructure

One of the factors for ECN to bridge the gap between fundamental knowledge and industrial applications, is the wide availability of purpose build equipment that allow the determination of membrane performances under simulated industrial conditions during prolonged periods of time. For gas separations, equipment is available that can run up to 1000 °C and 20bar and 700 °C and 60bar for oxidizing and reducing conditions respectively. Experiments can be performed at high partial pressure of water and in the presence of sulfur containing impurities. For pervaporation purposes, a number of different options are available that can run up to 200°C and a pressure of ~10bar. This includes a skid mounted pilot test unit that can be used on site of the interested end-user with a membrane area of 1 m². Of course, we also have access to various characterization tools such as Dynamic Light Scattering for particle size analyses in nanometer range, an in house developed Permporometer that can detect the pore size distribution of a nanoporous membrane, a range of microscopes, including a confocal light microscope, and various Scanning Electron Microscopes.
The membrane preparation laboratory is equiped with extruders and tube coat set-ups, one located in a clean room, and a wide range of furnaces. In one batch, a maximum of approximately 50 tubes of up to 1 meter length (adding up to about 2 m² of membrane area) can be coated, and subsequently calcined at a temperature of up to 1400°C.