September 16, 2011 – The Navy has awarded a contract to Skyhaven Systems, LLC to develop a compact and lightweight electrochemical reactor to remove carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulfide from biogas. A reactive-separation process will be developed where a redox carrier selectively binds to the contaminants allowing them to be removed through an ionic liquid imbibed membrane separator. This process electrochemically pumps the species across a membrane separator effectively concentrating it into a separate process stream. Skyhaven’s approach builds on recently developed technology in our laboratory and others in selective separation based on electrochemically modulated facilitated transport through task-specific ionic liquids. Unlike conventional membrane and absorption schemes, Skyhaven’s approach selectively binds compounds via charge transfer mechanisms to redox carriers. This allows bound compounds to be transferred through a membrane where they are subsequently released freeing the redox molecule to repeat the process. With this approach, no regeneration step is required for this membrane allowing a continuous process to occur for removing carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulfide from biogas.