Abstract: Carbon monoxide (CO) is an impurity gas that can poison the precious metal catalysts of hydrogen fuel cells, so it is necessary to separate CO from hydrogen. In this paper, an isovolumetric impregnation method was developed to prepare Cu(I)-supported activated carbon (AC), which is simple and easy to industrialize. The prepared cuprous chloride CuCl/AC adsorbent displayed a high CO adsorption capacity of 82.1 cm3/g and a high CO/H2 separation factor of 20 at 20 bar and 298 K. This material can adsorb and remove CO from CO/H2 mixed gas (5 μL/L CO-balanced H2) to less than 0.2 μL/L under dynamic flow conditions, and showed excellent regeneration performance. The results show that CuCl/AC is an effective adsorbent for separating trace CO in high-purity hydrogen.

Key words: CuCl/activated carbon, CO adsorbent, hydrogen, π-complexation