Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Most UK households use natural gas for home heating, largely because green policy inflated electricity costs are so high. But the Carbon Worriers in the British Government have a plan to fix this.
Does the Committee on Climate Change want to blow us all up? by CHRISTOPHER BOOKER.
Some publicity has alighted on the latest brilliant idea from the “greenies” as to how we can comply with the Climate Change Act by “decarbonising” our economy. Ofgem paid £300,000 for a study suggesting that, instead of cooking with CO2-emitting natural gas, we should switch to carbon-free hydrogen. A £2 billion pilot project for Leeds would show how natural gas, or methane, could be converted to hydrogen by piping away all its nasty CO2 to be buried in holes under the North Sea.
This scheme has already been smiled on in principle by the green zealots of the Committee on Climate Change, run by Lord Deben (aka John Gummer), their only real reservation being that it would be rather expensive. But there are one or two other practical problems that would have to be taken into account. One is that the technology to bury the CO2 under the North Sea has not yet been invented, and probably never will be. Another is that, extrapolating from the £2 billion needed to convert 320,000 homes in Leeds by requiring them all to buy new cookers, the cost of extending the scheme across Britain could be a staggering £162 billion.
More details on the plan;
Meeting the Challenge of the Climate Change Act
A practical answer for decarbonising heat presented to date.
Minimal Impact on Customers (85% use gas)
Maximising the use of existing infrastructure.
Understanding lessons of the past and investments of today to influence options of the future
Read more: http://www.praseg.org.uk
Christopher Booker has a point about the risks. Pure Hydrogen is dangerous. In my opinion, Hydrogen is not something you would want to pipe into a normal home. The slightest leak could present a lethal risk of explosion.
Hydrogen possesses the NFPA 704’s highest rating of 4 on the flammability scale because its elemental form of H2 hydrogen gas risks autoignition when mixed even in small amounts with ordinary air; hydrogen gas and normal air can ignite at as low as 4% air due to the oxygen in the air and the simplicity and chemical properties of the reaction. However, hydrogen has no rating for innate hazard for reactivity or toxicity. The storage and use of hydrogen poses unique challenges due to its ease of leaking as a gaseous fuel, low-energy ignition, wide range of combustible fuel-air mixtures, buoyancy, and its ability to embrittle metals that must be accounted for to ensure safe operation. Liquid hydrogen poses additional challenges due to its increased density and the extremely low temperatures needed to keep it in liquid form.
Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_safety
When I was a kid, I went to a party, where someone had filled some balloons with hydrogen – cheap floating balloons. Just popping the balloons, without any flame, was usually enough to trigger an explosion.
Lord Deben, and the other people pushing this plan, must surely be aware of the potential risks.
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My favourite hydrogen fact is that if a gram of Hydrogen is released anywhere in the world…within 12 hours or less it will be equally distributed throughout the entire atmosphere of the earth!
So then, if an Olympic-sized swimming pool of hydrogen was released, it would be well mixed within 12 milli-microseconds?
Just practicin’ my alarmist-style science. ☺
Now why is it that the hydrogen would distribute itself uniformly in the vertical direction, instead of the hydrogen partial pressure diminishing with altitude ?
At what altitude would the hydrogen stop maintain the same partial pressure as lower down ??
g
Completely failing to add that 80% of the natural gas piping in England would fail to retain pressurized hydrogen due to it seeping through the pipe walls…
Convert to hydrogen. Burn all the houses in Leeds down. Burn all the transmission lines, destroying nearby industry. Depopulate Leeds. Voia, Leeds is decarbonized.
A reading of UK newspapers would intimate that the British public would much rather have the dangerous hydrogen experiment conducted in Bradford. Why? I leave that for readers to research!
hahahahahaha thats really naughty (Bradford born and bred :))
“A reader of the Uk newspapers ” ( who’s average age is 6-8 years )
Ziiex Zeburz
April 24, 2016 at 2:26 am
“A reading of UK newspapers”
Before the UK British government took away our freedoms, a simple way to leave this planet whilst at home was to insert a shilling into the meter and then pop your head into the gas oven (unlit of course). The gas was coal gas and ones leaving occurred pretty quickly. Does anyone know if the same results would occur with hydrogen gas?(sadly shillings have been overtaken by decimal coinage so probably inflation means pounds would be required!).
Town gas had H2 and CO Carbon Monoxide in it. The CO did the killing.
H2 doesn’t do that. It will kill you by blowing up or having an invisible flame light your robe on fire as you reach for the kettle.
The problem of the invisible flame was solved in 1875 by Thaddeus Lowe. When town gas was replaced by natural gas in the UK a problem was the reduced light from the methane flame.
One can be asphyxiated with any gas other than oxygen.
I could almost swear that somebody was offering a prize for the most expensive method of reducing total CO2 emissions by one tonne.
Apart from the problem of establishing how much such a reduction is in reality “worth” to mankind – it should be obvious that even if we embrace the obsession with CO2 reduction then we should be aiming to make the maximum amount of reduction for the least cost.
The U.K. government appears to be most interested in making the minimum reduction for the most cost.
At least, based upon it’s preference for a range of bizarrely expensive boondoggle projects selected from the most expensive end of the menu.
And energy efficiency and energy saving schemes appear to have been intentionally sabotaged in order to validate their abandonment.
So, it’s tidal lagoons, offshore wind, subsidies for Prius drivers etc.
All the most expensive and least effective approaches to CO2 reduction.
And now talk of yet another insanely over-complicated and sure to be vastly expensive heap of crap.
It was noticing this phenomenon that lead me to suspect that cutting CO2 was never the genuine motive behind the govt. capture and total regulatory control of the energy market.
It’s power and greed from top to bottom.
And the poorest energy consumers are the ones left with the bill for these outrages.
Meanwhile, the chinese are leading renewable expansion without any appreciable rise in electricity costs to consumers (principally with big hydro – the cheapest renewable by far).
To them, we must look like a bunch of imbeciles.
What stupid pipe-dream idiocy are we going to attempt to implement next?
Maybe we could fuel Drax with organic granola shipped from New York health food stores.
It’s certainly high in calories, so that should be an easy sell.
I shouldn’t joke – somebody in government might see this and set up a “proof of concept” pilot study!!!
http://carbon.xprize.org/
But we all had hydrogen piped into our houses along with carbon monoxide, in the form of town gas, until North Sea gas revolutionized our lives. Spray steam on hot coke, et voila. It also helped poets commit suicide by sticking their heads in the oven.
We should dust off this post. I don’t think it has any hydrogen “experiments” so it must be safe.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/04/29/friday-funny-science-safety-run-amok/
Don’t worry about the content of the post, even though the photos are no longer available. The reply thread was completely hijacked by the likes of us.
Christopher Booker has a point about the risks. Pure Hydrogen is dangerous. In my opinion, Hydrogen is not something you would want to pipe into a normal home. The slightest leak could present a lethal risk of explosion.
Was this article written on April 1st? Hydrogen piped into normal homes is certainly not dangerous and does not pose a lethal risk of explosion. The rate at which Hydrogen diffuses is so high that it does not maintain an explosive mixture, far less dangerous than methane!
In fact hydrogen was piped into homes all over Britain for about 100 years with negligible risk of explosion, it was the poisonous CO that was mixed with it that was the problem. In fact when town gas was replaced in the 70s with natural gas there was a spate of home explosions due to the more dangerous methane. A national program to replace the leaky cast iron pipes was implemented because of the new danger.
Hydrogen explosions can and do occur. http://www.powermag.com/lessons-learned-from-a-hydrogen-explosion/
“The comparative safety of hydrogen can only be judged based on the particular circumstances
in which it will be used. In some instances hydrogen’s propensity to dissipate quickly, relatively
high LFL and low energy density may make it a safer fuel than the alternatives considered. In
other cases hydrogen’s wide flammable range, small quenching gap and propensity to detonate
may make it less safe.” http://www.eihp.org/public/documents/CompilationExistingSafetyData_on_H2_and_ComparativeFuels_S..pdf
Your continued comparisons of the very low pressure, very leaking, very low volume/minute, highly contaminated coal gas/town gas distribution networks with modern methane pipelines and capacities are wrong. EVERY coal gas plant met with high protests and they were the cause – even in the 1790’s to 1830’s! – of the first environmental rules and regulations, plant restrictions, and plant cancellations due to foul odors, and coal and gas pollution, and fires and simple site dirt, and ground pollution and noise.
Yes, the very inefficient, very ineffective cast iron and lead-soldered town gas systems were “safe” – in the same way that hundreds of 12 volt dc batteries delivering a few12 volts dc for a few meters are “safer” than a modern 120 VAC and 240 VAC electrical house systems. Are they comparable to natural gas in making a people more productive and using our resources wisely?
No.
It seems that many people fail to appreciate that flammable gas is not “explosive” unless it is mixed with a specific quantity of air. Obviously that can occur during a gas leak – and at the point at which a reasonable gas-air mix has been achieved, the mixture can explode.
But the non-explosive nature of contained pure flammable gas was demonstrated quite effectively by possibly the world’s most incompetent terrorist “bombing”, described in this link below.
Even more remarkable when it is considered that one of the “bombers” was an engineering student.
A harsh statement about the falling standards of university education in the U.K.
We can’t even turn out decent terrorists:
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2007/jun/29/politics.terrorism1
Sometimes I wish I were one of the aphids sucking on my lime tree. Just so I don’t have to belong to the same species as the average distinguished climate expert. You know, the ones who “tackle” climate and propose “solutions”, like sooting the air, burying gas, seeding or fizzing the oceans etc. (Back in the seventies they wanted to soot the poles and let off nukes to warm things up.)
They’re in the pay of Big Potty.
Since natural gas (methane, CH4) has 4 hydrogen atoms to each carbon atom, 4 in 5, how much impact would there be by going to 5 in 5?
Do these people ever sit for a moment and think before proposing changes to all our lives?
Drivel. Hydrogen burns slowly with a low temperature blue flame. As a kid I used to fill paper bags with hydrogen and set fire to them to show people who talked this trash about the Hindenberg disaster being caused by hydrogen. Hydrogen burnt with a cold blue flame totally unspectacularly.
Mind you, if you produce your hydrogen by electrolysis and leave in some of the oxygen it is a very different story.
The fire’s intensity was caused by the metal loaded silver coloured dope used on the covering which is practically identical to rocket fuel. Zeppelin’s own engineers fount this to be the cause nearly a century ago.
Let’s not reduce climate sceptics to the same pathetic believe what you want, and to hell with the truth or reality, of the climate scientists.
Hydrogen in air flame is actually very hot and you likely were playing with town gas.
Hi from Oz. FFS – when are these ***** lunatics going to be called for what they are? If anyone near me suggested replacing domestic gas with hydrogen for any reason short of demolition, I would call the police and get them sectioned (Oz code for ‘sent to a secure psychiatric facility for treatment’), or charged with treason or subversion. After that I would sit down and calculate the energy needed and the CO2 expended to convert CH4 safely into hydrogen, safely store it in vast quantities, and then add the $billions needed to fix up the nation’s gas infrastructure to cope with this loony idea, then ask those who suggested this to tell us where the money will come from. Then I would attack the single malt! Happy ANZAC day!
But of course when you did that, they would realize that you are the lunatic who doesn’t understand the science and has no knowledge of the extensive experience of transmitting Hydrogen containing gases for domestic consumption!
Would transmitting Hydrogen not in containing gases be feasible for domestic consumption?
clipe
No. Phil is apparently confusing the earlier, very inefficient, very poor heat quality and highly-contaminated coal gasses (that do contain a little bit of hydrogen when generated) with today’s efficient high-volume, high-pressure, non-leaking methane (natural gas) systems. See, apparently,ANY comments made comparing hydrogen delivery today with historical low-volume, low-pressure coal gas systems assumes that the gas concentrations (when generated from coal breakdown) are the same gas concentrations when-delivered (at the end of even those low-pressure pipelines).
But they are NOT the same.
Not so.
The delivered hydrogen is much, much lower because so much leaked out or was absorbed during the generation and separation processes as the coal gasses were bubbled through the water and coal tars. Or leaked through the storage tank walls, the storage tank seals and the pipe walls and pipe joints.
Thanks RACook. Phil has made a few comments about Hydrogen in “town gas” that didn’t add up in my uneducated mind.
…with regard to the topic of this thread.
RACookPE1978 April 24, 2016 at 3:43 pm
No. Phil is apparently confusing the earlier, very inefficient, very poor heat quality and highly-contaminated coal gasses (that do contain a little bit of hydrogen when generated) with today’s efficient high-volume, high-pressure, non-leaking methane (natural gas) systems. See, apparently,ANY comments made comparing hydrogen delivery today with historical low-volume, low-pressure coal gas systems assumes that the gas concentrations (when generated from coal breakdown) are the same gas concentrations when-delivered (at the end of even those low-pressure pipelines).
Not true, the town gas that I used in my lab and in my home was ~50% hydrogen, it was about half the volumetric heating value of the natural gas that replaced it due to the high hydrogen concentration. We used to pay for it by the therm and got regular analytical reports with our bills. The same pipes were used to deliver the natural gas after conversion but due to the number of natural gas explosions due to leaks a national program of upgrading had to take place. The leakage problems arose from the dry nature of the natural gas used compared with the town gas and leakage developed in the winter. Consequently the pipe repair program started in the north of the country.
Cook does not know what he is talking about.
clipe April 24, 2016 at 3:22 pm
Would transmitting Hydrogen not in containing gases be feasible for domestic consumption?
It appears that it would be feasible depending on how they propose to implement it. Certainly the fanciful consequences envisioned by some here would not happen. You can find an analysis here:
http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy13osti/51995.pdf
I’m waiting for some genius to suggest banning motor vehices …
… and bringing back the horse.. They’re green, aren’t they?
USA civil war, Washington DC was a continual clutterment of Horse shingle – poopus stinkus runus everywhere during rain. Freezing brought clean air smell. Not uncommon to have 2 feet in depth with the constant horse traffic in out and hitched here and there. For special events parades pompous street shows a local assigned military unit – 200-500 troops would shovel sweep the main streets and haul outside of the ‘boundary’ (??) area. Complaints aplenty during normal rain by citizens that lived-worked in the giant logistic sales-special interests of war goods. Horse dung does not make the best organic farming fertilizer.
Lord Deben lost me when he said on BBC Radio 4 Today programme that I was in the pay of fossil fuel companies. What a silly silly man
“Just popping the balloons, without any flame, was usually enough to trigger an explosion.”
Really? Can anyone verify please?
Static?
Yup. Lots of hydrogen gas in residential buildings looks like an excellent idea. From criminals, with a terrorist inclination, I mean.
See:
A HYDROGEN-AIR EXPLOSION IN A PROCESS PLANT: A CASE HISTORY
by Bjerketvedt, D and Mjaavatten, A
Faculty of Technology, Telemark University College, Kjolnes Ring 56, Porsgrunn, NO-3918, Norway
Is it not amazing what 7 kg of hydrogen can do?
There is no plan to store ‘lots of hydrogen gas in residential buildings’. As was done in the UK for 100+years hydrogen gas was distributed at a low pressure and explosion risk was negligible. It was only when natural gas was distributed with its higher explosion risk that gas explosions in residential settings started to occur.
In the case you cite the hydrogen was stored at 30bar pressure (~450psi) which is a very different situation, natural gas stored under the same conditions would have double the explosive energy!
In syngas there’s indeed some Hydrogen, but we are talking about pure Hydrogen here, which is an entirely different beast altogether.
Energies 2010, 3, 216-240
doi:10.3390/en3020216
Gasification Processes Old and New: A Basic Review of the Major Technologies
by Ronald W. Breault
Town Gas Characteristics
……………………………………………………
Chemical Composition
Carbon Dioxide 19.9%
Carbon Monoxide 3.1%
Methane 30.7%
Hydrogen 43.3%
Nitrogen and Oxygen 3.3%
Before they used natural gas, towns and cities in America and Britain used town gas, derived from coal. Town gas is predominantly hydrogen and we know that towns and cities managed to survive without blowing up.
So I am afraid Christopher Booker has got this one wrong. There should be no safety concerns regarding the use of hydrogen, even within the existing infrastructure.
Whether it makes environmental or economic sense is something else.
Town gas also contained significant levels of CH4, CO, C2H4, N2 and other trace components.
They could reduce the danger by diluting the hydrogen with cheap dephlogisticated air. Strangely scientific but entirely impractical, this suggestion plainly qualifies as climate science and should attract substantial government backing.
My presentation will hint that when making the dephlogisticated air, any phlogiston extracted could be used to reinvigorate the stale air from coal fired power generation so it could be safely released back in to the atmosphere as a healthy rejuvenating vapour.
Phlogiston futures could be floated on the stack market and with a bit of favourable legislation, a lot of politicians could make a lot of money. If they cared to toss me a Nobel prize I would not complain.
A while ago, I built a semiconductor plant that used a small amount of hi purity Hydrogen in its process. The extent to which the Hydrogen piping was overbuilt and tested tells you how dangerous this gas is. I’m sure processes have changed over the years but it is the only socket welded pipe I ever saw used in 35 years of construction.
Ask any engineer who has designed the off gas system for a boiling water reactor. Look at the ventilation requirements for the rooms and buildings that this gas passes through. Look at the height of the off-gas tower. Look at the requirements for and steps taken to assure that the off-gas is diluted to ensure that the H2 is less than 4%. I was involved with the acceptance testing of one of these systems. We had a tanker filled with H2 used to inject the hydrogen into the system. We also had two fire stations, and the site fire crew, at the ready, A rather nervous day.
“Ask any engineer who has designed the off gas system for a boiling water reactor…”
I was a BWR Off gas system engineer as well as a PWR waste gas engineer. Also was team lead for process safety reviews at chemical processing plant for systems that used hydrogen, natural gas, and ammonia.
Before Proud Skeptic starts building something, people like me have to show regulators that it is safe to the regulators. Natural gas, no problem. Hydrogen, very hard even in a controlled industrial setting. I could do it in a house but no one could afford it.
I am not afraid of radiation. Hydrogen is very scary and there are fatalities. Ammonia is even scarier and there are more fatalities. Sure they did such and such during WWII, and yahoo framers do stuff to make food, but the power industry has very high safety standards because we can.
So politicians and economists can suggest all manner of foolish things but someone like me is not going to sign off the hazard analysis.
They could have done with your expertise at Fukushima. As you know, those almighty explosions that wrecked the entire plant were hydrogen explosions. All they needed to prevent this, was some hand-cranked windows at the top of the buildings. But nobody thought of that, and a gas build-up ensued, with predictable consequences.
A Fukushima hydrogen explosion.
http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/fzz2.jpg
The number of useful things Lord Deben is aware of can be counted on the fingers of a fish’s hand.
Tetrapod, why single out a fish?
I’m so sick of the business with CO2 emissions, I think a different tack is needed. Perhaps we can turn the tables on them?
The EPA is charged with protecting the environment – but in lowering CO2 emissions, they will be depriving plants from much needed plant food. They are in violation of their mission. They have no reason to continuing with lowering emissions. Atmospheric CO2 is not harmful to human health and it’s not harmful to the environment.
And nobody has explained how they will prevent a Lake Nyos disaster.
Having buried all that Co2 under the North Sea, what will prevent a well blow-out? Because if there is a blow-out, the Co2 will hug the surface (especially when constrained by a large nighttime temperature inversion) and get blown either to the Dutch coast or the UK east coast. And there it will suffocate everything in its path, inflicting thousands or millions of casualties.
I have asked this question for a decade now, and never got an answer from a government department or the media. Everyone whistles softly, and looks in another direction.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Nyos#1986_disaster
R
Lord Deben’s committee will not be swayed by any scientific argument they are all bereft of any capability to comprehend anything scientific as is obvious by them even briefly contemplating this idea. What will stop them in their tracks is being held accountable for the potential destruction of houses and loss of lives in Leeds (if that is indeed where they are proposing this demonstration of stupidity). The insurance companies will without exception withdraw their insurance cover on houses and companies installing equipment indeed on everything and everyone anything to do with the exercise. So it will not happen. Nobody will take any part in the exercise as they cannot proceed uninsured on their own liability. Stupidity always tends to lose when faced with financial accountability.
Looks like the Malthus worshiping greenies have come up with a wheeze to both depopulate and decarbonise all in one fell swoop. I can’t make up my mind whether they are evil or just plain stupid.