Membranes shown (from top to bottom): ceramic support, activated and coated with palladium oxide, plated with palladium, and plated with palladium and gold.

Membranes are a commercially-available technology in the chemical industry for CO₂ removal and H₂ purification. There is, however, no commercial application of membrane processes that aims at CO₂ capture for IGCC syngas. Due to the modular nature of the membrane process, the design does not exhibit economy of scale—the cost of the system will increase linearly as the plant system scale increases making the use of commercially available membranes, for an IGCC power plant, cost prohibitive. For a membrane process to be a viable CO₂ capture technology for IGCC applications, a better overall performance is required, including higher permeability, higher selectivity, and lower membrane cost.