Guest essay by Eric Worrall
BBC’s Roger Harrabin and Keele University thinks it would be a great idea to pump vast quantities of hydrogen into people’s homes, to reduce CO2 emissions from gas powered appliances.
Climate change hope for hydrogen fuel
By Roger HarrabinBBC environment analyst
2 January 2020A tiny spark in the UK’s hydrogen revolution has been lit – at a university campus near Stoke-on-Trent.
Hydrogen fuel is a relatively green alternative to alternatives that produce greenhouse gases.
The natural gas supply at Keele University is being blended with 20% hydrogen in a trial that’s of national significance.
Adding the hydrogen will reduce the amount of CO2 that’s being produced through heating and cooking.
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Why not add more than 20% hydrogen?
The 20% proportion was chosen because it’s an optimal blend that won’t affect gas pipes and appliances.
Currently, the UK has only small supplies of hydrogen, but the firm says increasing production would offer a quick way of cutting emissions from heating.
Consultant engineer Ed Syson told BBC News: “The prize is a large one. If we were to roll this system out across the UK it would be on broadly the same scale as offshore wind is today. So it’s a significant technology.
“What’s more, it makes those carbon savings without having customers change their behaviour in any way.”
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Major drawbacks to hydrogen are cost and availability. The costs are much higher than for natural gas, although the differential will surely shrink as carbon taxes raise the price of burning gas to combat climate change over coming decades.
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Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-50873047
Hydrogen is dangerous. It damages metal pipes, it leaks prolifically through the tiniest cracks, cracks too small for other components of natural gas, it ignites easily and violently over a wide range of fuel air mixtures, and it burns with a flame so hot it is invisible. One slip-up and you are dead – a large scale hydrogen industry will kill people.
But human safety never seems to be the primary concern of climate activists.
Whether its opposing controlled fire safety burns because CO2 emissions, building unstable wind turbines in heavily populated areas, forcing families to install light bulbs which contain toxic mercury, killing people with a rushed climate friendly home insulation programme, and now mixing a dangerous explosive with home natural gas supplies, human safety seems to always come a distant second to a chance to shave a few percent off CO2 emissions.
Hydrogen contains less energy than it takes to make it, so what’s the point? Where does the needed extra energy come from, fossil fuels?
This is the crux of the matter where any energy is concerned. To be viable the energy expended in harvesting the energy into a stored and useable form MUST be less than the energy harvested. This is where fossil/nuclear wins out as the the storage aspect has already been carried out and all one has to to do is dig it out and use it. Sadly the thermodynamic laws make harvesting renewables generally non viable at scale and only useful on an opportunist basis, such as in sailing ships and pumping water.
Bending the thermodynamic laws by financial manipulation is a fool’s errand, now rife amid the alarmist contingent.
“Hydrogen is dangerous. It damages metal pipes, it leaks prolifically through the tiniest cracks, cracks too small for other components of natural gas, it ignites easily and violently over a wide range of fuel air mixtures, and it burns with a flame so hot it is invisible. One slip-up and you are dead – a large scale hydrogen industry will kill people.”
Oh lord. Scarmongering, or else all the gas and steelworks that the UK had been utterly irresponsible. Cog is 60 percent hydrogen.
The big issue is hydrogen is that the rotating equipment is not compatible. Also the energy levels from hydrogen per volume, are lower.
What is missing from the extract is how the hydrogen is going to be created. “ The hydrogen could be generated pollution-free by using surplus wind power at night to split water molecules using electrolysis.”.
Of course one could point out that we do not ever have surplus wind power1!
Perhaps they meant surplus solar power at night. Makes just as much sense..
This idea needs a pilot study.
Couldn’t Mr Harrabin’s house and that of the Keele University person be adapted to take such a mixture? Run the study for a year or two and make sure Mr Harrabin, his family and likewise the Keele University chap and family occupy their respective houses for the duration of the study.
I’d recommend that nearby houses are vacated while the study is in progress.
Keele University has its own private gas supply and is a large campus(625 acres) and is 3 miles away from Newcastle under Lyme although Keele village is closer,which is why it was chosen.
Sounds like an absolutely brilliant scheme…for generating grant funding!
Can I suggest that readers Web search Wirral UK gas explosion, to see just what devastation plain old “North Sea Gas” can bring to a community. How much worse if big cousin H2 joins in.
BBC Look North West has reported on this for over three years. It was also a national story. The locus of the explosion is about 50 miles from the Uni in Stoke.
That was the problem of replacing town gas by natural gas, the risk of explosions became much higher. From the perspective of explosions hydrogen is safer.
From the perspective of explosions hydrogen is safer.
Nonsense. Hydrogen is THE most volatile substance.
From the perspective of explosions hydrogen is safer.
Nonsense. Hydrogen is THE most volatile substance.
So what if it were (that is Helium actually), Hydrogen diffuse very rapidly so doesn’t maintain combustible mixtures when compared with methane and propane, both commonly supplied to houses and more dangerous from an explosion perspective.
Maybe in the open, but the situations of concern are in enclosures where hydrogen will accumulate against ceilings and other catchments. I dealt & worked w/hydrogen-filled generators for decades, and hydrogen is more dangerous than other gaseous “fuels”.
Maybe in the open, but the situations of concern are in enclosures where hydrogen will accumulate against ceilings and other catchments. I dealt & worked w/hydrogen-filled generators for decades, and hydrogen is more dangerous than other gaseous “fuels”.
Just like methane and propane will accumulate except they contain more energy, also hydrogen diffuses so fast that it will not accumulate against a ceiling.
The Wirral explosion was the result of arson, a guy took off a cap on the gas supply to the building and disabled the safety switch in order to destroy the building and make an insurance claim. No reason to assume that the explosion would be any worse, if there were 20% hydrogen present the volumetric energy content would be less. One of the advantages of replacing town gas with natural gas in the UK was the fact that the energy content approximately doubled thereby increasing the effective rate of supplying energy through the pipes.
If we are ever able to make cheap hydrogen without generating CO2; then the sensible thing to do with it would be to crack heavy hydrocarbons. Take the goo that comes from tar sands and turn it into natural gas. With more effort we could even turn coal into natural gas.
Which chapter of the Bright Idea Club does this dude belong to? Doesn’t matter: they’re all operating out of greed and ignorance, with no thought to the consequences because they’re “insulated” from them somehow, when they should be the first to try them, just as a demonstration of good faith.
Used to be that balloons were inflated with hydrogen gas, but the molecule is so small it leaked right through the balloon in a heartbeat and balloon vendors wen to helium, which is slightly larger and more stable and doesn’t set the house n fire.
Hey, I have a really, really Great Idea: Let’s have all these geniuses do the conversion to their own households first and watch what happens. If they survive the disastrous fires, pat them on the head and ask them “What else have you got?” Seriously, using hydrogen gas as a fuel will NOT reduce carbon emissions.
All life on this planet is carbon-based, so what are these clowns going to do about that?
Since none of these ideas are thought through, and the known impracticalities are ignored by the Bright Idea Club, just make sure we’re aware of it and can point out the fail rates and the REAL dangers, and point and laugh at them when it all goes BOOM!!! Hearing “told you so!!” is not something they want.
Sara January 3, 2020 at 4:21 am
Hey, I have a really, really Great Idea: Let’s have all these geniuses do the conversion to their own households first and watch what happens. If they survive the disastrous fires, pat them on the head and ask them “What else have you got?”
I grew up in a house supplied with town gas (~50% Hydrogen) until about 1970 when it was replaced by natural gas. The ‘disastrous fires’ you refer to just didn’t happen.
I will bet you my house those people use electric for cooking and oil for heating.
One loves the economics – sure, it’s high cost compared to natural gas but when huge taxes are placed on natural gas then hydrogen will appear cheaper and everyone and everything will be all peachy.
Yes. Let’s split water into oxygen and hydrogen so the hydrogen can slowly leak off into space and the entire planet goes dry. Gets rid of that nasty dihydride pollutant that causes global warming.
NREL
Changes made to housing construction methods and appliances always lead to some unintended consequences (low flush toilets, over insulated homes, compact fluorescent lights all come to mind). This shouldn’t be done without building some test homes and studying the heck out of them. I don’t see why it couldn’t be done safely, eventually, but is it a wise choice? IS there really a benefit/cost ratio > 1?
Even if tests show no unexpected behavior over a wide variety of conditions, one still has the issues of intermittency (necessitating large scale hydrogen storage), and the wisdom of putting availability through a long chain of conversion to deliver the lowest quality energy (low temperature heat).
Just wait until the new refrigerants get implemented.
They call them mildly flammable.
but a least they have low global warming potential
R32, R1234ze, but maybe cooler heads will prevail, implementation has been delayed…
D boss above said hydrogen burns with a red or coloured flame, sorry buddy NOT SO, what you observed was not pure hydrogen. Part of my responsibility included the production and use of 180 million scf per day of hydrogen at up to 1600 psig, I assure you that in normal daylight a pure, better than 98%, hydrogen flame is invisible.
If you have ever seen the results of hydrogen blistering in the middle of a 4 inch thick steel wall of a high pressure vessel then you would not consider the proposals of these raving idiots, the only way to transport and combust hydrogen safely is the way we have done for centuries, it’s called hydrocarbons.
The concept of hydrogen as an energy carrier keeps rearing its head every ten years or so when the morally bankrupt unemployable grant grabbers hope that the current crop of technically illiterate politicians have forgotten the pain of the last time they were suckered into literally burning money.
The green meanies are just yelling “look squirrel” as they rearrange deck chairs on the not so good ship climate change as it sails deeper into iceberg alley.
What’s being discussed is not pure Hydrogen but a mix of Methane and Hydrogen which will burn with a blue flame just like natural gas and the town gas which was ~50% Hydrogen. Hydrogen was used for over a century as an energy carrier and a means of lighting houses quite safely, replacing it with natural gas led to multiple explosions.
Quite right. Adding carbon to hydrogen (a hydrocarbon as you say) makes it progressively safer to transport/store & easier to handle as a fuel.
Just another completely idiotic idea from people that have no idea about energy production/use or even basic grade-school science.
I turned on a furnace that the previous day had been overhauled when the engineer guy had put 2 pipes on the wrong way round so instead of air coming out the hole it was propane.
Off I go to have a cigarette and a meander and when I come back to light the thing it didn’t go bang but there were clouds of swirling flame all around me which was quite interesting to look at.
If you believe Harrabin and the he BBC you must believe in fairies at the bottom of their garden
And all it takes is one idiot in elected office to pimp this garbage and it becomes law.
And where will all this hydrogen come from? Can’t use solar – too expensive and not reliable. Wind is almost as bad, but at least the wind sometimes blows at night. Hydrogen is not cheap to produce in the first place, but the two least expensive methods are from natural gas or coal via steam reforming. The side product is carbon monoxide. Have they included the cost of distilling the CO from the hydrogen so they don ‘t poison us? This might be one separation that can be done with pressure-swing adsorption, given the large difference in size between hydrogen and CO. Either way, it will cost even more money. Better to reduce the CO2 output by not building useless windmills and solar panels.
Another idea from the Department of Solutions to Non Existent Problems. Why cut the Carbon Dioxide
emissions, they are only a problem to the Scientifically Challenged, the Politically Deranged and the Chemically
Addeled. To those of us who have a science rather than a liberal arts based education they are plant food. The increased levels of which allow the plants to make better use of the available water. Hence the recent greening of the planet.
Mixing hydrogen with natural gas lowers its heat of combustion on a per-volume basis. Methane (the primary component of natural gas) has a lower heating value of 909 Btu per standard cubic foot (Btu/scf), while hydrogen has an LHV of only 274 Btu/scf, or only about 30% of that of methane. A mixture of 20% hydrogen and 80% methane (by volume) would have an LHV of 782 Btu/scf, or about 14% less than that of pure methane. In order to obtain the same heating value, a greater volume of the hydrogen / methane mixture would have to be burned.
Free elemental hydrogen gas (H2) is rare in nature, since it tends to rise through the atmosphere and escape from Earth’s gravity into space. It can be generated by electrolysis of water or by steam-methane reforming.
Electrolysis of water requires the same input of electrical energy as can be obtained by burning hydrogen, so that electrolyzing water to obtain hydrogen for burning is self-defeating, due to the inevitable losses of energy in both processes. The only way that this would reduce CO2 emissions would be if the electricity used in the electrolysis was generated using nuclear power.
Steam-methane reforming reacts one mole of methane with two moles of steam to produce four moles of hydrogen and one mole of CO2, in a three-step process, whose first step requires heating to about 1400 F over catalyst, and is endothermic (consumes heat). The heat that can be obtained by burning the hydrogen is less than the sum of the heat of combustion of methane and the net energy input to the process, so that if combustion is the only goal, it is more efficient to burn the methane directly without generating hydrogen. Both steam-methane reforming and direct combustion of methane result in the same emission of CO2 (one mole CO2 emitted per mole CH4 consumed).
Steam-methane reforming is useful in petroleum refineries to generate high-purity hydrogen, which can then be reacted with distillate fuels to remove sulfur (hydrotreating), and the desulfurized fuels do not produce sulfur dioxide when burned.
Hydrogen can also be generated by catalytic naphtha reforming, where petroleum compounds boiling between 180 F and 350 F are converted to aromatic compounds (benzene, toluene, xylenes, etc.) by removal of hydrogen. This process also consumes more heat than can be generated by burning the hydrogen, but is used in petroleum refineries primarily to increase the octane rating of the naphtha to produce high-octane gasoline.
Blending hydrogen into natural gas does not reduce total CO2 emissions, because the processes used to produce hydrogen result in CO2 emissions. Hydrogen is not very useful as a fuel, but it is a useful intermediate product in petroleum refineries, to reduce the emission of other non-CO2 pollutants.
Well stated sir. The town gas consumed in Hong Kong is most likely one of many hydrocarbons produced at a local refinery.
I’ve sailed into HK many time but don’t recall seeing a refinery.
As you noted; the bottom line here is, Adding H2 to NG is hardly a free ride and stunting naphtha for H2 production will raise gasoline prices.
How did such a rubbish article make it on to this site? It is pure, uninformed scaremongering straight out of the green propaganda playbook, complete with misleading caption pic – just like the cooling tower shots beloved of the warmists. The author must have been moonlighting from a day job at the Guardian or BBC.
This sort of tripe undermines the scientific integrity of this site. It should be taken down.
Actually, the concept of cracking crude to produce Naphtha and the bubble it into H2 is rubbish.
I completely agree. I wrote a similar evaluation. This decade may be our last chance to get emissions down to proper levels, and uninformed scaremongers are sabotaging the likelihood of a swift transition to renewables. This is just embarrassing, and it should be taken down before even more people read this.
Back in the 80’s I was project manager on a semiconductor plant. They used hi purity hydrogen as part of the process. The piping was silver soldered and tested to within an inch of its life. I can’t image having that kind of quality control in residential construction.
I know this is obvious if one thinks about it but many, especially the CLIMATE CROOKS might not:
A mixture is a mixture so its constituents will act independently of each other.
Therefore, although hydrogen will leak through even the tiniest opening or any material which is, to a degree porous to it, the other constituents in the mixture will not.
In particular this will include the substance that adds odour to the mixture so we can smell a gas leak.
virtually anything
Hydrogen is a very aggressive gas that makes pretty much anything it touches brittle. You don’t want to have too much of that stuff in your high-pressure steel pipeline. Has anyone properly tested out material fatigue as a result of so much hydrogen?
This an embarrassingly poor evaluation and journalists like Eric Worrall are ruining the chances of a swift transition to renewables. Not only is this article basically catastrophizing for no reason whatsoever, but there is no explanation or science backing his argument. This is just horrendous. Eric Worrall, this is not the tone of your writing you should be aspiring for. Less-informed individuals may believe your analysis and it could stifle much-needed development in the renewables sector. If you believe hydrogen is dangerous, compose an argument with sources and let people discuss, but DO NOT catastrophize when you do not have all the facts. It is a shame how commonplace this is.