Join us this month for John Graf’s “Ceramic Ion Transport Membranes – A new method for oxygen generation”
For the past 50 years, there have been three commercially available methods for oxygen generation:
Cryogenic air separation plants provide industrial scale oxygen to steel mills and petrochemical plants. This technology is cost effective at large scale, but cryogenic air separation is not practical for small scale portable oxygen.
Pressure Swing Adsorption (PSA) systems have been commercially available since the 1980’s. PSA systems are effective for small scale compact portable systems, but they require regular maintenance.
Water electrolysis oxygen generators have converted oxygen into oxygen in confined spaces like submarines and spacecraft for more than 70 years. Water electrolysis systems can store oxygen in the form of water, which is dense and safe and stable. Use of water electrolysis systems is limited to confined space applications, because the energy cost of splitting water is relatively high.
NASA has been leading efforts to develop a new kind of oxygen generation technology. Ceramic Ion Transport Membranes can extract oxygen from air using a mechanism that is solid state. Small scale, portable Ion Transport Membrane systems can be effectively built, the oxygen generator shown in the figure below is smaller than 0.5 m3, it has operated continuously for 366 days with no maintenance and no changes in system performance. Ceramic Ion Transport Membrane systems produce oxygen with purity >99.9%
NASA is developing the technology to enable the recharge of spacesuit oxygen tanks with high purity, high pressure oxygen, but this new technology has the potential to address other oxygen generation applications including: medical oxygen in remote locations, ultrapure oxygen, oxygen for laser cutting, and oxygen for semiconductor manufacture. Recent developments in membrane manufacturing have matured the technology and enabled commercialization. American Oxygen, the company manufacturing ceramic ion transport membrane systems for NASA plans to sell commercial systems in 2026.
Please join us after the talk for drinks and networking at Second Draught!
