From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
Hydrogen could replace natural gas in thousands of homes under controversial plans to decarbonise entire towns in Britain’s push towards net zero.
Ministers have asked the UK’s main gas network operators to nominate the most suitable towns to be moved from methane to pure hydrogen as part of the pilot over the next decade.
It comes as the Government prepares to publish its long-awaited “Hydrogen Roadmap”, which will set out how the UK can build a network of hydrogen production factories, and convert homes, businesses, and transport networks to the green fuel.
In a recent letter from the Government, operators were told that policymakers want to “support the development of plans for a pilot hydrogen town which could potentially be implemented before the end of this decade”.
They were asked to supply the names of towns they deemed “most suitable for conversion to enable hydrogen heating at scale”.
Subsequent suggestions for potential hydrogen towns include Aberdeen, Scunthorpe, and areas close to Humberside and Merseyside.
Two towns in Wales and another in the West Country have also been proposed, although only one or two of the nominated towns will be chosen.
The plan will no doubt prove controversial.
The Government has already been forced to abandon plans for a smaller “hydrogen village” in Whitby after local protests.
However, moving the UK away from natural gas is essential to achieve net zero targets and Ministers are seeking new ways to press ahead.
Decarbonising heating has become a bit of a Pushmi-Pullyu!
One minute the government is advised to concentrate on heat pumps, because rolling out a hydrogen network is far too complex, costly and problematic.
The next minute hydrogen is back in favour because of the drawbacks of heat pumps!
I’m not really sure what any of these trials will achieve, other than cost taxpayers a lot of money. We already know that it is possible to pipe hydrogen into homes, and we know that you can burn it in a gas boiler with suitable modifications. If the government is really concerned about the safety aspects, it should not be using the good folk of Aberdeen as guinea pigs!
The real issue is how you produce it in the first place, how you store enough of it for winter, and how you move it around the country.
The plan of course is to use electrolysis, powered by renewable energy. But for the next decade and more, there will be no spare wind or solar power, as it will be maxed out on the grid. At most there may be a small amount of surplus wind power available at times, but far too little to be of any real use.
Electrolysis using expensive offshore wind power is also horribly inefficient and costly.
That then leaves steam reforming natural gas, which emits carbon dioxide, is also costly and uses more gas than you would if you burnt gas in the first place. None of which make it a sensible option.
I suspect this is just more nonsense dreamt up by the government’s green advisors in the DESNZ, desperate to be seen to be doing something!
This comment days it all:
Whatever town they choose, they should rename it Hinden-Burg
Or Hindon Burg
Since it will be separated from gas interties
https://www.google.com/maps/@51.094427,-2.1270556,16z/data=!3m1!1e3
Hindon, Salisbury, UK
Rather Hendon Burg, NW London.
The word “explosion” is too harsh and has a negative connotation. I wonder what they will come up with?
Sudden Thermal Expansion
Unplanned Thermal Excursion
Spontaneous oxidation with a simultaneous drop in density.
The space industry, particularly Elon Musk’s SpaceX company, already has just the right euphemism to cover it: a rapid unplanned disassembly (RUD) . . . now to be applied to houses and apartment buildings, not just rockets.
They’re “nominating” towns for the experiment. Do the citizens know what is planned for them?
I can’t imagine anyone with a couple of brain cells would be happy being nominated let alone “winning” the nomination.
I think that the experiment should start with the abodes of government officials that thought this was a good idea. That would be a win-win scenario – finding out if the experiment works and if not, possibly removing dumbass leaders.
Perhaps XR households would volunteer. They seem to really care about the environment.
By “win”, they mean the chosen town has the least ability to stop them.
As I understand it, they don’t have the ability to defend their property except with their corrupt court system.
I’m pretty sure that if this were to happen in some rural area in the U.S., the government officials and construction crews would be met with armed resistance.
FJB
Well, it really comes down to which town do you want to see gassed and/or explode in a ball of fire! I realise similar objections were probably raised in 1812 when the first gas mains were being built but even those engineers wouldn’t have used ‘pure hydrogen.’
Can somebody please have an adult discussion in parliament about the best and most cost-effective energy systems, or is that simply too much to hope for?
Well pure hydrogen is safer than the mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide that was supplied to houses in the UK for about 100years. Explosions weren’t a problem until they converted to natural gas.
Hydrogen by itself is incredibly dangerous. Coal gas is a complex mixture of hydrocarbons. Your claim about explosions is untrue. The flashback arrestor was only invented in 1945 by Paul Witt. Until then all gas distribution systems and appliances were dangerous.
The two major components of coal gas were hydrogen (50%) and carbon monoxide (~15%). You don’t need a flashback arrestor when your supply pressure is less than 1psi. When i was in the lab at school if the Bunsen burner flashed back all that was needed was a ‘karate chop’ to the hose.
Hydrogen is really safe and leak proof when H4 is stabilized with a single Carbon Atom
Carbon!?
“Shall I murder you with this gun?”
“Oh no, I wouldn’t like that!”
“Then it must be with this knife.”
“No, no, I wouldn’t like that either.”
“You have to choose one, come now, hurry up, only 6 years to go.”
I found this quote, which I think, sums up the situation nicely;
Some scientists claim that hydrogen, because it is so plentiful, is the basic building block of the universe. I dispute that. I say there is more stupidity than hydrogen, and that is the basic building block of the universe. Frank Zappa
See the following video by Sabine Hossenfelder a German theoretical physicist,
https://www.youtube.com/watch/Zklo4Z1SqkE
For a comprehensive discussion of all the problems etc. Like myself she describes herself as once being “somewhat upbeat about the future of Hydrogen” until she did the research for the video.
Hydrogen manufactured by electrolysis is nascent Hydrogen H+ not H2. This is such a small atom (a single proton and an electron – anything smaller is subatomic) it dissolves into steel (causing hydrogen embrittlement) forming a solid solution – it literally can go through metal walls. It eventually stabilises to H2. But is problematical in production and leakage is unavoidable.
All existing steel pipe gas infrastructure is unsuited to conversion to Hydrogen.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_embrittlement
For me the final nail in the coffin of Hydrogen is the problem of leakage – something engineers have been unable to solve. It is a very small molecule and leaks through most seal materials, some metals and micro-porosity in welds etc.
Consider the September 2022 delayed launch(s) of NASA’s Artemis I Moon shot – caused by Hydrogen leaks – if NASA scientists and engineers (with lengthy experience of using Hydrogen) have problems, I really don’t see the average household having much luck with Hydrogen.
I would also imagine that any home enthusiast tinkering with a Hydrogen system would frequently prove catastrophic. (Many natural gas household explosions are linked to illegally bypassing meters with a crudely fitted rubber hose, I don’t imagine Hydrogen will fare any better but the consequences will be very much worse and more likely.)
Hydrogen is explosive in almost any concentration, from 4% to 74% that’s really wide.
There will at some point be an almighty and catastrophic bang and the Hydrogen experiment will be over.
The problems that beset Hydrogen are based on non-negotiable laws of physics and chemistry – so there is little hope of improvement or significant gains over time.
So my current position is that Hydrogen will not solve our energy problems principally because it is dangerous, grossly inefficient (overall) and a pollutant with real and serious consequences for global climate.
https://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2020/06/Hydrogen-Fuel.pdf
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/04/17/the-green-hydrogen-swindle/
A comment from the above article – Using hydrogen remains the worst way of doing almost anything.
Mercaptan mixed well with natural gas as an odorant so you can smell a leak. How would you smell an hydrogen leak?
Easiest way to find a hydrogen leak is to light a match, it’ll then find you.
Problem is you won’t know if the hydrogen is burning as a hydrogen flame is invisible. We use hydrogen as an annealing gas for steel coils. I wear a infrared sensor if I am anywhere near it at work to stop me from walking into an invisible flame.
We had a problem with erosion in elbows in the plant. The leaks would happen there. The best way to test for leaks was to hold a 6 ft stick out in front of you because you can not see the flame. It bursts in to flame before you do.
Hydrogen cyanide has an almond like smell. It could be effective.
After all, the desired effect of decarbonizing is population reduction.
Where do you get the “pollutant with real and serious consequences” for anything at all other than explosive danger in some circumstances?
Here’s the problem: if we start to use Hydrogen as a world wide portable fuel (to replace petrol, diesel & LPG) will be that the loss of Hydrogen through leakage will be appreciable.
Also “unburned” hydrogen on misfires or “rich” running will also be “leakage” to the atmosphere.
Cryogenically stored liquid hydrogen – typically stored in thermos flask type vessels is initially cooled and then kept cold by evaporation – another major source of “leakage”.
Hydrogen refuelling stations have a tall exhaust stack to vent bleed hydrogen – usually forced draught diluted to keep clear of explosive limits.
Losses to leakage, cryogenic evaporative cooling, coupling & uncoupling etc. can be from 1% to 10% most knowledgeable sources say the 10% end is more realistic.
Leakage Hydrogen will rise rapidly through the atmosphere, through the stratosphere and eventually meet the Ozone layer – there it will react with the Ozone to produce water vapour. (6H+O3 = 3H2O)
Even an extremely optimistic 1% loss, if Hydrogen is adopted as a large scale portable fuel replacement, will release sufficient free hydrogen to be extremely damaging.
This will be bad for two reasons :-
Firstly the damage to the Ozone layer – by depleting it will bring about greater UV exposure.
Secondly this water vapour above (and within) the Stratosphere will produce (previously rare) noctilucent clouds which will drastically and persistently increase the Earth’s albedo (reflectiveness) thereby causing a significant Global Cooling.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noctilucent_cloud
This water vapour being generated in the Stratosphere by leakage Hydrogen will also act as a greatly enhanced “greenhouse gas”.
I left this out of the original post for brevity.
You see here one of the practical difficulties in converting to hydrogen: you have to do it to a whole area at once. You can’t just leave half the street, or a few streets, on gas and put the others on hydrogen. This is why its heat pumps or hydrogen, and this is why the talk is of converting a whole city.
Another problem is the pipework. The assumption is that the pipe network is able to carry hydrogen safely. This is very doubtful. You have to worry not only about the local street pipework, but also the houses. In London and probably in most old English cities with old terraced housing you have old iron pipework bringing the gas supply into the houses, where its spliced to copper to distribute it. Every one of these connections is going to have to be redone, along with lots of street pipework.
Is the copper in-house pipework safe for hydrogen? Soldered joints which may be 50 or more years old?
Its going to be enormously disruptive and expensive. And then, as Paul says, at the end of the day they have no source for hydrogen and even if they did succeed somehow in making it by electrolysis from wind and solar (in the summer) they have nowhere to store it. The idea of doing this at a national scale is absurd.
When you think a bit about the plan that this all forms part of, it gets even worse. They have the idea of converting to hydrogen at the same time as they plan on converting heating to heat pumps. So you do all this work to make the gas pipe grid ready to carry hydrogen at the same time as you try and eliminate one of the main uses of gas.
Then, at the same time as this, they are converting their power generation to wind and solar. But this is combined with the extra demand not only from the heat pump program but also from the EV conversion program. Now add to that the demand for still more wind and solar power to make the hydrogen by electrolysis!
It cannot conceivably be done. The conversion to wind and solar for present demand is impossible because of intermittency. If you combine it with at the same time moving to EVs and heat pumps its even worse. If you then try on top of this to install enough wind to produce enough hydrogen to replace natural gas it becomes absurd. The amount of wind you would need to even have a halfway reasonable crack at it would be huge. And that’s not counting the storage requirement which would also be huge.
The most likely outcome is a few hydrogen projects proposed, strong local opposition, and in the end maybe one or two small scale token projects. A bit like COP, lots of hot air but in the end emissions keep rising at the same pace and there’s no-one, except the West, signing up to any reductions or even slowing down. Climatism has become a sort of collective mass delusion on the part of the entire political class in the UK, its caused them to totally lose touch with reality on energy policy.
Except for Reform, which is rising in the polls.
The gas main pipelines run under the road, with branches off to every house. Where I used to live that would be 100 such junctions. At each property the gas main then joins to a meter, with the output going to the house itself, that’s a further 200 joints before you’ve gone inside the house. Then there’s the joint where it splits between the cooker and the boiler, that would be another three joints, a further 300 for the road. Then the joints at the cooker and boiler, 200 joints for the road. Which works out at 800 separate places that need to be hydrogen proofed for just 100 houses as a minimum.
Natural gas explosions, although rare, are devastating, what would be the impact on a hydrogen based system?
Could a flame back track from a house into the main pipeline in the road?
What pressure would be required, when we switched from coal gas to natural gas in the 1960’s there was a mass conversion required?
Finally, would insurance companies be prepared to insure these houses given the potential devastation that a hydrogen fire could cause?
Yes. Its not just the junction joints you mention, either. Terraced houses, well, all houses, there will be lots of soldered joints in the runs of copper to get to the junctions. Mostly all buried under the floors, so you have no idea where they are. I wouldn’t, myself, go for hydrogen without a complete re-plumbing of the house supply. Doing all that for a medium sized city…? Good luck!
You’re looking at over 1000 maybe 1500 joints per 100 houses. Then there are blocks of flats and other such structures as well as schools, hospitals, offices and factories.
The town where I was born has a population around 70,000 plus breweries and other manufacturing, a district hospital and an assortment of schools. Would it be an exaggeration to suggest there are three million joints in the gas system just for a medium sized town in the West Midlands in England? If this were expanded proportionally across England alone that would equate to billions if not trillions of vulnerable joints. A hydrogen fire in the Shard in London for example would probably be more devastating in terms of deaths, injuries and damage than the attacks on the twin towers in 2001.
The other issue is what is formed when hydrogen burns, water vapour which is worse than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas, therefore it is counterintuitive for hydrogen to be suggested as an alternative to natural gas.
From “Logistics of Domestic Hydrogen Conversion”
Frazer-Nash Consultancy
Prepared for the Department of Business, Energy &
Industrial Strategy
October 2018
_______________________________
Copper piping was introduced in the 1960s. Before this, lead and steel were predominantly used for domestic gas pipes. There is no legal obligation to remove old pipework unless a fault is discovered and many homes in the UK still have these legacy materials [N]. The stakeholders also reported that there are regional trends in gas pipe usage with iron predominately used in London and the South of England, and lead in the Northeast and Yorkshire….
The pre-conversion tasks required for the domestic gas pipework are less certain. A number of different materials are currently used for domestic natural gas pipework, including copper, steel and MDPE as well as various pipe joining methods. There are also various different legacy materials that are still in existence in homes. Hydrogen presents different safety concerns to natural gas – it has a greater propensity to leak through joints but it will also tend to disperse and dilute more readily. Welded (soldered) copper is widely used and the view from the stakeholders was that this is likely to be suitable for hydrogen, although further studies will need to be undertaken to confirm this [Sections 3.4.1, 4.1.2, 9.1]. It is judged that the inaccessibility of domestic gas pipework could be a significant barrier to conversion if pipework needs to be either fully inspected or replaced as natural gas pipes are sometimes covered by concrete or ducted through inaccessible voids [Section 3.4.1, 9.2]. The suitability of existing domestic natural gas pipework for hydrogen and understanding the general condition and accessibility of domestic gas pipework will be considered as part of the BEIS Hy4Heat programme….
However, whilst it is likely that copper pipework will be suitable for hydrogen (discussed in Section 4.1.2), it is proposed that the integrity of any joints is more questionable, and some joints may require upgrading.
Not directly mentioned in the above text, but a MAJOR concern is the known propensity for hydrogen to embrittle (i.e., make easier to crack or break) steel pipes. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_embrittlement )
With hydrogen, it’s not just leaking joints that one has to worry about!
A gas’s ability to disperse is relatively meaningless inside a closed building. Combine that with hydrogens much higher flammability range, and you get a big problem really fast.
Inside a closed building, faster dispersal just means it takes less time for the gas to find an ignition source.
Are there enough people in the UK who know how to solder pipe?
Anyone know what effect leaked hydrogen might have on the reo in concrete.. or on concrete itself ?
Every 90 degree turn in that pipe is going to result in two more joints.
The five most recent opinion polls, in chronological order, put Reform at 11%, 8%, 9%, 11% and 7%. And even if Reform was polling at 20% it would be very unlikely to win any seats. Under First-Past-the-Post, 20% in every seat gets you no seats in Parliament.
And how many reduced degrees of global warming will be the result of this project?
All those old pipes you mention used to carry hydrogen to those houses before the late 1960s without problems!
No, they didn’t.
They carried coal gas which had a small proportion of hydrogen. Its a completely different proposition. Had its own risks, but embrittlement was not one of them. With pure hydrogen it will be, and a very serious one.
This sort of remark is a giveaway. The climate tendency really thinks that energy planning, infrastructure planning, is just a matter of off-the-cuff remarks like this. It is not. It needs professional factual analysis. Rely on these kind of instant and mistaken impressions, go ahead regardless, and things will blow up.
Read the paper I referred to earlier. Then ask yourself, you are, lets imagine, in charge of the rollout and accountable for all health and safety aspects. Are you going to rely on your vague feeling that the network was OK for coal gas so it must be OK for pure hydrogen, lets go? When a possible jail sentence for negligence is in the background after an explosion if you are not thorough, and get it wrong?
You are considering your options when in a pilot zone. You ask about the pipework in your street and house. You get a vague reply that its most likely going to be fine. Do you go ahead? Happy for your own family to take the chance based on these kinds of assurances and assumptions?
“They carried coal gas which had a small proportion of hydrogen. Its a completely different proposition.”
The composition of gas derived by the gasification of coal has the following volume percentage. Hydrogen 50%, carbon monoxide 16%, carbon dioxide 4%, methane 15%, ethane 3%, benzene 2%, and balance nitrogen.
That’s a ‘professional factual analysis’!
When they converted to natural gas in the UK the assumption was that the network was OK for natural gas, actually they found that it wasn’t and there were problems with explosions which hadn’t happened before.
I lived in houses supplied by coal gas (50% H2) for the first 25 years of my life, never heard of a problem with explosions, but did hear about poisoning by CO. After introduction of natural gas I did hear of problems with explosions.
You are right! And I’m guilty of having done exactly what I accused you of, making assumptions!
Still and all, at 50% I am very surprised that joints and embrittlement were not risk factors. Is there an issue of lower pressure due to higher caloric value?
Yes, I am familiar with the carbon monoxide issue from coal gas. Quite some tragic cases. It was a lot too easy, with a gas fire in lots of rooms, all you had to do was put a wet towel down to seal the door, and go to sleep.
One thing due to the lower calorific value/unit volume was that the pipes delivered less energy than when replaced by natural gas. Suicde by gas was the main way that people did it in the UK at that time, in the manner you described.
Still and all I would personally insist on new pipes before I’d sign up to hydrogen.
And I have seen the links from street into houses in London terraces. They are steel (or iron), and mostly ancient, so embrittlement must be an issue with pure hydrogen. I’m very surprised it was not at 50% with coal gas. I wondered if it could be due to a lower pressure with coal gas, but that seems unlikely if it was 50% hydrogen.
The paper from the consultants I quoted from above obviously think it is at least a question that is hanging. Its very cautiously worded, but the sense of an issue, and covering their liability for advice, is made quite clear.
Don’t know. Its not as clear as I thought, but it would be a very brave contractor who would just turn on the hydrogen for a city and hope.
One of the advantages of coal gas was that it was wet which apparently helped seal any leaks, when natural gas was used it was dry and dried the surroundings of the leak making it leak more.
It’s the heat-pump hydrogen merry go round
In and out of favour they make Rwanda look sane
Story Tip
Meanwhile, also in the Telegraph, it appears that the climate lobby has finally noticed that the UK has seasons, and that in summer there is more sun than in the winter. Who would have thought it? Some extracts below.
___________________________________________
Households could be paid to use power when sun shines
Surge in solar panel developments causes wholesale prices to crash
With the number of solar panel installations having tripled in the past year, there is now expected to be more than 25 gigawatts of capacity by the end of 2025, analysis shows.
But periods of sunny summer weather will happen when demand for power is lower than the coldest winter months, creating a mismatch of supply and demand.
Experts at Imperial College London said this sets the stage for dramatic falls in wholesale power prices during warmer periods, as most solar panels will carry on generating even when their electricity is not needed.
It means power prices could turn negative more often, as they have done in Europe, according to an analysis prepared on behalf of the power company Drax.
Negative prices mean power consumers are effectively paid to draw power from the grid.
They added: “This will crash wholesale power prices, as most of the country’s solar panels are not centrally dispatchable, meaning they export to the grid even when their power is not needed.
“This contributes to the substantial negative power prices seen across Europe this summer which will be a common feature in the UK too.
“Dealing with this effectively, and preventing renewable energy from being wasted, will require making the power system more flexible.”
The researchers suggested that this excess power could be managed through more battery storage, exporting it abroad or even paying “curtailment” fees to solar generators.
_______________________________________
Then we find at the bottom of the piece something which makes one think the entire country must have taken leave of its senses:
As previously revealed by The Telegraph, Ofgem, the energy regulator, is considering plans to turn farmland equivalent to 40,000 football pitches into industrial solar farms across southern England, to boost green electricity generation close to London.
What are these clowns thinking of?
“”Experts at Imperial College “”
Nuff said, they’re lunatics.
Which is quite sad, really. Imperial College was once an august institution.
‘Thinking?’ If they’d been thinking at all then we wouldn’t be in this mess.
NOt only are they going to drive up the price of electricity, they are going to do the same thing to food prices.
This is not going to end well.
PS: So much for locally sourced food.
Southern England is above 50 degrees North latitude, and known for relatively cloudy weather year round, so the amount of electricity that could be generated by solar panels would be worth much less on the open market than the food that could be produced by 40,000 “football pitches” (soccer fields) of farmland.
As farmland, all that rain is put to good use growing food. With solar panels, the clouds are only blocking the sunshine and reducing energy output. Land with a cool, damp climate is good for farming, while solar panels work best in a hot desert. Why try to turn good farmland into a desert?
The most strident “ruinable” energy town should be selected as guinea pigs. Let’s see how fast the NIMBY phenomenon appears.
Find the place where most of the Exeter Uni and CRU climate troughers live. !
What’s about Buckingham Palace ?
No, the UK owns it, Chucklehead Charlie only lives there – best to pick somewhere he owns.
So both have the joy, the UK following the Royal ideas 😀
I’m and engineer, and I would like to see a demonstration hydrogen-only village built on bare ground here in the US. It would be inhabited by those who want to live there. It should be built where residents can find well paying employment within hydrogen fueled driving distance. Home heating would be hydrogen only. Fossil fueled access for construction, maintenance services, school buses, visitors, etc. would be allowed. But home owners should understand going in that within 10 years ownership of fossil fueled vehicles would be prohibited.
You have to understand the politics. The Conservative government know that they won’t be in power for much longer. Certainly not when these plans are supposed to be implemented. So it’s really just a matter of trying to show that, inspite of their recent very limited pull-back , they are still in favour of Net Zero. It’s just a way of trying to show themselves credible to the green lobby. They probably won’t name the selected town before the next General Election.
You have to understand the politics
Is there s.th. to understand ?
The problem being that all those who will or might be part of the next government – Labour, Lib Dumbs, Greens, SNP – are all even more stupid than the current lot of clueless clowns on this issue (and most other things).
What pullback was that, announcing a 5 year delay to the ICE ban but the fines on the manufacturers for selling ICE cars were left in place as were the % of sales allowed fine free. Smoke and mirrors.
DESNZ = Department for Energy Security and Net Zero Emission
What would Churchill say?
Something unprintable.
I’ve started reading a biograph of him- put it down for a while- should get back to it. One thing he certainly had- if not always good politics and military planning- he had guts.
“This is the kind of nonsense up with which I will not put.”
“All I can promise you is blood sweat and tears.”
I doubt whether he’d say anything at all about it since he will have lived in houses heated by hydrogen and using hydrogen to cook with! Possibly something like ‘thank God we’ve finally got rid of the carbon monoxide and the smell’.
FACT
Producing hydrogen yusing natural gas for energy results in less eneergy that was in the natural gas.
FACT
Natural gas pipelines will deteriorate form more than 10% or 15% hydrogen in the gas being transported.
FACT
Leftists try to learn about every subject with the goal of knowing nothing about everything. Jumpin’ Joe Biden and Kamala “word salad queen” Harris have succeeded. Maybe John “why the long face?” Kerry too
Daily climate and energy articles recommended reading lists, including this article:
Honest Climate Science and Energy Blog
Why let facts get in the way of a favoured policy – that’s not the eco-loon way.
There is no justification for going to hydrogen while ample supplies of natural gas are available. Same for transportation fuel (gasoline, diesel). But when that day comes, if ever, we need the knowhow to make a safe, economical transition. Puffery about the Hindenberg, explosions, leakiness etc., etc., etc., will not help.
Hendon Burg, NW London.ssds
Hydrogen efforts like this are typically pushed by the gas industry. If you are starting with electricity, resistance heaters are about twice as efficient as making hydrogen to burn for heat.
Heat pumps are 6-10x more efficient than burning hydrogen. And if the goal is to consume more electricity when the wind is blowing, thermal energy storage is as simple as a box of bricks.
And hydrogen is a GHG. About 12x as strong as CO2, according to the first study you’ll find if you search for it.
Hydrogen in homes only makes sense to people who get paid to sell gas.
Hydrogen is the smallest element and is very likely to leak from pipelines designed for natural gas. Pipe embrittlement. Depending on the type of material and on the construction of the pipeline, hydrogen leaks at about three to five times the rate of methane leaks.
Hydrogen has a wide range of flammable concentrations in air and lower ignition energy than gasoline or natural gas, which means it can ignite more easily.
Fo automobiles: Hydrogen can be explosive with oxygen concentrations between 18 and 59 percent while gasoline can be explosive at oxygen concentrations between 1 and 3 percent. This means that gasoline has greater risk for explosion than hydrogen for any given environment with oxygen.
Beyond the huge pipeline problem, what is more dangerous inside a home’s basement: Hydrogen leaks or methane leaks?
There are not enough data for a good conclusion so I will apply common sense:
Leftists love hydrogen
Leftists think they are experts on every subject.
Leftists are actually experts only on how to seize political power
Leftists ruin everything they touch
Therefore, a hydrogen leak in a basement is likely to be worse than a methane leak. Notthat any leak is good news.
“Beyond the huge pipeline problem, what is more dangerous inside a home’s basement: Hydrogen leaks or methane leaks?”
Methane leaks, explosions in basements weren’t a problem until the conversion to natural gas.
A demonstration project would make sense. A demonstration TOWN is far-far beyond nonsensical.
I say, start with a demonstration HOUSE. This could have to be far enough from neighbors to be somewhat safe – except for the inhabitants. A single house would still be pretty much impossible in the next decade. It would need sufficient kWh for electrical power, heating-cooling, and charging the owners 2 EVs. It would also need sufficient acreage for the wind turbines and solar panels, and also safely house the storage batteries to carry through the winters.
This would be, at least technically feasible, though fiscally foolish. It would, however, produce scalable costs and reliability numbers to demonstrate how foolish it actually is. I would also give odds that it would fail.
I should have added that the cars could be either hydrogen ICE, or EVs, and that the storage could be either batteries, hydrogen tanks, or both.
None of that other stuff would be a requirement to use hydrogen for interior heating, hot water, and cooking. Hydrogen could be supplied much as propane is supplied to a large number of homes: refilling of a large enough cylinder that feeds the house, located on the property. If one house would provide any useful data, it would be simple.
I am an engineer, maybe not worth my salt, but as the man said this is a bloody stupid idea. I worried for 20 years about putting natural gas into my house but I wouldn’t worry about putting hydrogen in my house – there isn’t any way I would let it happen.
I was concerned when they replaced the hydrogen gas supply to my house by natural gas because of the increased explosion risk but fortunately all was well.
You keep saying NG has an increased explosion risk
Flammable range of NG is 5%-15%, flammable range for H2 is 4%-75%. How is NG inherently riskier?
You keep labouring the point that hydrogen has a greater explosion risk than methane but I can find no information, where do you get this from? Intuitively I would think the opposite is true due to the greater capacity of hydrogen to escape through leaks and also the negative Joule-Thompson effect associated with it. Also, when and where did you have a hydrogen supply to your house?
Of course I meant that you say methane has a greater explosion risk than hydrogen
Hydrogen diffuses very rapidly and doesn’t achieve a combustible mixture, however methane does not and stays within combustion limits for longer. The gas supply to houses in the UK was 50% hydrogen/16% CO up until the late 1970s.
I can see a future hydrogen shortage becoming a major problem. Not only do the numpties want to use in domestic housing but also in trains and other transport and in steel production.
As for the latter Hybrit in Sweden has produced 100 tonnes of steel using hydrogen and is in the process of scaling up to 1m tonnes. Now the world uses around 2bn tonnes of steel a year. Produce that using hydrogen? – I don’t think so 🙂
Why are we in the UK not fracking ?
Even if CO2 was a climate driver it would still be the greenest way to transition to Unicore Farts and Fairy Vomit energy.
“Aberdeen. Aberdeen. Biggest explosion you’ve ever seen.”
“In other news, Aberdeen exploded last night causing £6 billion of improvements.”
Only government buildings and the homes of politicians, bureaucrats, administrators and their staff should be part of the pilot program. Leave the rest of us alone.
I hope all these promoters of hydrogen realize that any H2 combustion operates at a very high temperature due the energy content being ~120 MJ/kg (LHV). This will undoubtedly create thermal NOx – far more than natural gas stoves. As the present plan in the US is to eliminate gas stoves on the basis they create NOx, I wonder how broadly the hydrogen economy will spread its wings.
Do you know what is low-NOx, clean burning (in the right devices), cheap and can be stored for years without expensive containment? Coal. Lignite is particularly easy to burn very cleanly because of…. the hydrogen content! Yup. Hydrogen burns well and moderately when it is combined with carbon and a small amount of moisture. I recall that as a group, these fuels are called hydrocarbons.
Imagine a 100% renewable power generation, storage and distribution system.
An Energy Storage System is an essential element of such system.
Batteries are not a practicable or feasible option for storage on such a scale.
Hydrogen for storage? Let’s see.
Step 1. Overbuild renewables to provide sufficient electricity to make enough H2.
Step 2. First priority for H2 would be to generate baseload power in converted conventional power stations. (This is a bootlacey thing because it releases renewable power to make more H2)
Step 3. Second priority for H2 would be to generate power when renewables plus baseload is insufficient for demand.
Step 4. Third priority for H2 would be every other use,: transportation, other industrial uses, commercial and domestic uses.
The challenges:
The so-called Hydrogen economy is a fantasy unfounded on robust engineering analysis of what would be required for a fully coordinated and optimised system design.
Currently, if there is a gas leak houses can be destroyed. I’m guessing hydrogen will definitely not be any safer and perhaps more spectacular?
No, due to the high rate of diffusion of hydrogen a high enough concentration for an explosion isn’t maintained with such low pressure delivery systems. When coal gas was being delivered to houses in the UK explosion wasn’t a risk, with natural gas there’s about 40 per year.
Fools. Trying for 100% hydrogen ( a very volatile and dangerous fuel) when we have been burning 80% hydrogen for decades, is just pig headed foolishness.
Natural gas, or CH4, is already 80% hydrogen and much safer. Been proven safe enough to pipe into millions of homes around the globe.
Why bother with the extra (highly dangerous) 20% which will make precisely ZERO diff to the weather in 100 years?
We all know the purpose of the foolishness has nothing to do with the temperature at noon on 15/12 2123. It has everything to do with control, wealth transfer and power.