A typical process of pressure swing adsorption (PSA) for H-2 purification consists of a sequence of stages involving high pressure adsorption and low pressure desorption at a determined temperature. If it is desired to optimize a process already installed, the pressure cannot be easily modified. In this work the viability of modifying other operative variables was studied. For it, in the first stage a cryogenic exchange equipment was developed, which allowed representing in practice the theoretical conclusions regarding the improvements obtained in methane adsorption by the effect of the temperature decrease. In this way, it was possible to increase the total load of the unit to 25%, and the H-2 recovery to 2.5%. In the second stage it was attempted to diminish the consumption of cryogenic liquid (40Nm(3)/h); for it the characteristic of dry gas of the PSA waste was taken as an advantage and a cooling system was devised. (C) 2008 International Association for Hydrogen Energy. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.