Press Release Back Number(2005)

Chubu Electric Power develops world's best-performing oxygen separation membrane
- Extracts oxygen from the air to enable development of next-generation gasolines and high-performance fuels -

October 26, 2005
Chubu Electric Power Co., Inc.

In partnership with Noritake Co., Limited (Address: 1-36, Noritake-Shinmachi 3-chome, Nishi-ku, Nagoya, Japan; President: Noboru Akahane), Chubu Electric Power has developed an oxygen separation membrane that offers the world's highest oxygen-permeation performance.


Separating oxygen and other elements present in air, an oxygen separation membrane is primarily used in various thermal processes in equipment such as furnaces to reduce fuel costs by increasing fuel efficiency. Separation membranes do this by increasing the oxygen density needed for combustion.


This oxygen separation membrane developed by Chubu Electric Power and Noritake is made of a special ceramic material that allows only oxygen ions to permeate under high temperature conditions. The material achieves oxygen-separation performance of 27cc/min/cm2, the highest yet recorded.


The most promising future application of this oxygen separation membrane lies in gas-to-liquid (GTL) technology.


GTL technology is used to produce liquid fuels such as gasoline and lamp oil from natural gas. The technology will make it possible to produce clean liquid fuels that contain virtually no pollution-causing substances such as sulfur. Use of this oxygen separation membrane also offers the potential for effective use of small, remote natural-gas fields previously left unused because the handling of natural gas in its natural state would have involved various prohibitive costs, including pipeline installation costs. For all these reasons, this technology has attracted considerable attention.
In addition, since it can also be applied to the natural gas produced as a so-called associated gas at oil excavations that until now had either been burned or released into the atmosphere, the technology can help prevent global warming and atmospheric pollution.


The most advanced current GLT technology in terms of development and practical implementation is a method for producing the oxygen needed for fuel conversion in oxygen production plants. However, this method requires the installation of large-scale plants and entails significant cost. For this reason, development of next-generation technologies using oxygen separation membranes is proceeding rapidly in North America and Europe.


This oxygen separation membrane boasts performance of 27cc/min/cm2, dramatically improving upon the 20cc/min/cm2 threshold required for next-generation GTL plants. This oxygen separation membrane will make it possible to build smaller, lower-cost GTL facilities.


Chubu Electric Power and Noritake plan to continue working to establish the technologies required to produce larger oxygen separation membranes for mass production as a step toward adopting the technology to actual plants. The two companies will also proceed to develop applications for next-generation GTL technologies and a high-temperature oxygen-separation system that takes advantage of the properties of ceramics.