Hydrogen pump using a high-temperature proton conductor for nuclear fusion engineering applications

In a nuclear fusion plant, the development of hydrogen processing technologies is an important issue since hydrogen isotope gas must be utilized as fuel. High-temperature proton conductors are favorable materials for hydrogen processing systems in nuclear fusion engineering. Possible applications of proton conductors include hydrogen pumps and hydrogen sensing. For one of these protonic functions, we have proposed applying a hydrogen pump to hydrogen recovery in the hydrogen processing system. In this paper, as a feasibility study, a one-end closed tube of SrZr0.9Yb0.1O3 − α proton conductor was evaluated as a hydrogen pump at elevated temperatures. As a result, hydrogen gas could be extracted from a mixture of gases including hydrogen, water vapor and methane, simulating the gases present during hydrogen processing in a fusion device, while methane and water vapor could be decomposed to hydrogen gas on the platinum electrode. This result indicates that a hydrogen pump using a proton conductor is quite useful in the hydrogen recovery system for the exhaust gas of a fusion device.