From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
h/t Patsy Lacey
Existing fossil gas infrastructure such as pipelines and appliances are “mostly unusable” with hydrogen, without either major investment, or changes in operation that would significantly reduce the amount of energy delivered to customers, a new peer-reviewed study has revealed.
The paper, A review of challenges with using the natural gas system for hydrogen, published yesterday (Monday) in the Energy Science and Engineering journal, examined the risks and potential solutions for the use of hydrogen in existing long-distance and distribution pipelines, storage and end-use appliances — as well as re-iterating the risks of explosions, fires and asphyxiation caused by hydrogen leaking from poorly adapted infrastructure.
This is the paper itself:
Abstract
Hydrogen, as an energy carrier, is attractive to many stakeholders based on the assumption that the extensive global network of natural gas infrastructure can be repurposed to transport hydrogen as part of a zero-carbon energy future. Therefore, utility companies and governments are rapidly advancing efforts to pilot blending low-carbon hydrogen into existing natural gas systems, many with the goal of eventually shifting to pure hydrogen. However, hydrogen has fundamentally different physical and chemical properties to natural gas, with major consequences for safety, energy supply, climate, and cost. We evaluate the suitability of using existing natural gas infrastructure for distribution of hydrogen. We summarize differences between hydrogen and natural gas, assess the latest science and engineering of each component of the natural gas value chain for hydrogen distribution, and discuss proposed solutions for building an effective hydrogen value chain. We find that every value chain component is challenged by reuse. Hydrogen blending can circumvent many challenges but offers only a small reduction in greenhouse gas emissions due to hydrogen’s low volumetric energy density. Furthermore, a transition to pure hydrogen is not possible without significant retrofits and replacements. Even if technical and economic barriers are overcome, serious safety and environmental risks remain.
https://scijournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ese3.1861
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What a waste of time and money. Hydrogen is a complete non-starter.
Plans for a Cheshire village to be used to trial the UK’s first hydrogen-powered community have been scrapped after residents objected.
…
After listening to the views of residents it’s clear that there is no strong local support.
“Therefore Whitby will no longer be considered as the location for the UK’s first hydrogen village trial.”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-66165484
Just to be clear, people don’t want to be guinea pigs for a bunch of demented hand-wringers. They’re happy with what works.
Strong support or not alike… it’s absolutely unsafe. Hydrogen is the smallest molecule in the universe. It even diffuses through steel, making it brittle to boot. Leaky pipelines with an explosive gas is the perfect recipe for an explosion. The best “carrier” for hydrogen is in the form of hydrocarbons! Although the whole issue is meaningless, economically, it would be cheaper just to sell natural gas or other fossil fuels with a certificate claiming the resulting CO2 emissions from its combustion has already been captured somewhere else (e.g. at a coal plant where it’s easier to capture), rather than trying to produce and use hydrogen gas directly.
It would even make more “sense” or rather less nonsense to use excess unneeded “renewables” energy to capture CO2 at strategic locations to “greenwash” fossil fuels
than to produce hydrogen, where no standard infrastructure is available, either on the production as well as on the consumer side.
Our gas mains are relatively ancient. It really is a non-starter.
And these gas lines are already in use.
There is a simple solution to allow H2 to be run safely and efficiently through existing gas infrastructure.
Simply bond 2-H2 molecules to a single Carbon atom and problem solved
Quite the opposite – the nation has been safely piping hydrogen into town and house since the 1700s and lighting burners safely in side houses too.. Remember that coal gas was 60-70% hydrogen.
Do you have any statistics on coal gas? Didn’t it kill some people? I don’t know- just asking.
Town gas was manufactured very locally (from coal or naphtha from crude oil distillation) and stored at low pressure in gasometers. The distribution pipework was correspondingly low pressure, but despite that, it was leak prone: carbon monoxide was a further hazard. The modern methane network operates at much higher pressures, with linepack acting as short term localised buffer storage to handle variations in demand. Town gas consumption was limited: originally more or less just street lighting. Later cooking stoves and gas fires – used sparingly. Central heating didn’t really come in until after North Sea gas. Gas fired power stations were unheard of in the town gas era: they ran on coal.
Hydrogen will need to be distributed from the limited locations that can offer salt cavern storage. That will engender the problems described in the paper – and I suspect more.
The main method of production was via the water shift reaction:
C + H2O -> CO + H2
giving 50/50 carbon monoxide and hydrogen.
It’s irrelevant and redundant anyway. Nature has already provided an efficient and effective packaging method for hydrogen. It comes as CH4. It combusts cleanly with no adverse gaseos pollutants or heavy metal toxins.
I once had a home with a gas furnace- it never had to be cleaned.
And those ancient gas mains were originally used to carry hydrogen successfully with no problems.
“Hydrogen is the smallest molecule in the universe. It even diffuses through steel, making it brittle to boot. ”
What are they teaching people today? I learned this in my high school chemistry class in 1957! The teacher even filled identical balloons one with Hydrogen, one with Helium and one with NG to demonstrate this. The one with Hydrogen was nearly flat and the other two were still round the next day. What blew my mind was when he lit the jet of Hydrogen gas and the flame was invisible.
In the Navy we had Hydrogen detectors for the missiles and shiftily checks of the missiles, which, theoretically, were designed to be leak proof. However we still got alarms.
An under appreciated fact is that H2 molecules are in equilibrium with H atoms. Albeit with the eq constant vastly in favor of the molecule. The point is, the stray hydrogen atom diffuses even more easily into a metallic lattice. When it eventually encounters another H they will form H2 and the resulting increased size disrupts the metallic lattice at the atomic level. This is one mechanism of Hydrogen embrittlement and at high pressures can even lead to blisters within the metal.
A very nice explanation of the hydrogen embrittlement problem.
very interesting!
Not only is a hydrogen flame almost invisible in daylight, a hydrogen flame produces no radiant heat. If you try to find a burning hydrogen leak with your hand, you will not feel the heat until your hand or body part is within the flame. My safety training always included the warning to never look for a hydrogen fire with your hands. Use a magazine, newspaper, broom or something else that you don’t mind burning. NEVER use your hand.
Yes, let’s jump into using an unproven technology with no infrastructure to support it. Sort of like EVs.
This has been known for decades, perhaps even a century. See “The Future of the Hydrogen Economy: Bright or Bleak?” Cogeneration and Competitive Power Journal · July 2003 DOI: 10.1080/15453660309509023. This paper summarizes the costs of managing hydrogen as a gaseous fuel. At every step, the cost of hydrogen production, compression, shipping (by truck or pipeline), liquefaction, and use are evaluated and found to be utterly impractical and expensive. The evaluation is not new science, just an assembly of the known properties of hydrogen. The answer is, of course, bleak.
I can’t understand the hydrogen idea. How is it made in the necessary quantities? Excess windmill ‘lecky? Oh dear. Using gas? Oh dear. I think Whitby people’s rejection was understated. Mine would be NOWHERE NEAR ME AND MY KIDDIES GO AWAY. GO AWAY!!
But some people need to stop panicking, learn the realities of the science and like the Victorians get on and do it. As an eight year old I used to go to sleep with our coal gas light lit by a match by my parents in my bedroom. Coal gas was 60-70% hydrogen of course and there were few accidents from that. Coal gas also had a small proportion of carbon monoxide in it which made the gas itself poisonous to breath.
I suspect that the coal gas was being distributed at not much above atmospheric pressure, so the issues of leakage and embrittlement would have been relatively benign. The NG transmission pipelines are often operated at over 50% of the yield strength of the pipe.
Yet the old coal gas of both Victorian times and well into the 20th Century too, was itself approximately 60-70% hydrogen. Many of those pipes are sensibly still in use today without issues. A lot of us alive today can well recall the change over to natural gas which went through very easily I remember. We most certainly DO need and want to implement hydrogen based gas supplies in the longer term.
I remember the natural gas switch over too – and you are right, it was easy. However, for 40+ years, new gas underground installations in the UK have used plastic pipe. Back in the early 1970s, when the natural gas replaced town gas, the whole network was galvanized steel. Going back isn’t an option.
“We most certainly DO need and want to implement hydrogen based gas supplies in the longer term.”
Absolute NONSENSE. There is absolutely zero necessity to convert to hydrogen.
“””We most certainly DO need and want to implement hydrogen based gas supplies in the longer term.”””
Why? Are you suggesting Carbon dioxide is some kind of threat?
Carburetted water gas was the most common form of manufactured gas distributed as late as 1950. It contained about 35% hydrogen and about 40% hydrocarbon gasses and had half or less of the energy content of natural gas. The manufacturing of this gas was hazardous to the workers killing many.
It wasn’t 60-70% hydrogen, it was 30-35%. This is just making stuff up.
The issue about hydrogen is that 35% is probably the max you can safely go.
The reason why going to Natural Gas was easy is that they were lowering, not raising, the percent of hydrogen. It does not follow that because the old pipes could safely carry 35% hydrogen that they can carry 100%. Nor does it follow that because 35% hydrogen could be safely used in homes of the day 100% hydrogen could also be safely used today.
In fact, neither is true. There is another significant difference with the changeover. Back in the day there was limited use of gas for heating. There were gas open fires, and gas was cooked on. But the proliferation of gas boilers for home heating and hot water occurred after the move to Natural Gas. Going to pure hydrogen, even if you could get it in enough quantity, would be a much bigger task than the previous conversion.
The problem in converting houses is going to be that the copper piping is probably OK in itself. But the soldered or compression joints are probably not all safe. So realistically you would have to totally replace the in house copper piping, not just the pipework in the streets.
Hopeless, and pointless, since you are going to have to get the hydrogen from NG in the first place, at great expenditure of energy.
Its a similar stupidity to propose to take out NG boilers with 90%+ efficiency and replace them with heat pumps, which will end up using electricity made by burning that same gas at 40% efficiency, and then encountering transmission losses and losses in the heat pumps. A completely hare-brained idea, like almost all (all?) green energy proposals.
In the UK, Miliband and his drive to UK Net Zero, risks putting the Labour Party out of business for good. Not this year, not next year, but when the blackouts start to hit, and when prices have risen before the next election, watch out.
“…The problem in converting houses is going to be that the copper piping is probably OK in itself. But the soldered or compression joints are probably not all safe. So realistically you would have to totally replace the in house copper piping, not just the pipework in the streets…”
In the US, a lot of pipe from the meter onwards is threaded API 5L Gr B black pipe. It would leak like a sieve in H2 service.
Likewise, as old carbon steel ages out most utilities are replacing last mile distribution with HDPE pipe. H2 would permeate right through it.
When hydrogen is used to generate electricity, isn’t the waste product H2O, a very nasty greenhouse gas?
Yes it is. And according to the IPCC it amplifies the heating effects of CO2, causing even more heating.
It is clear that boiling water is the existential threat that has not been addressed by politicians who want to save the earth.
No Soup for you!
Why was the coal-gas hydrogen mix replaced with methane?
Natural gas (mostly methane) when burned releases about 3 times more heat energy than an equal volume of hydrogen. Coal gas was ok for street and household lighting but not for much else. When natural gas was discovered in Fredonia NY in the early 1800s it offered much better performance per cubic foot delivered than coal gas so it was adopted over the years as exploration revealed ever increasing recoverable amounts.
What need?
“We” need to save the earth, donchaknow, because everything bad that ever happened is “Our Fault”. To relieve “our” guilt, we must repent to save the Earth. Repenting atones for the sin of being Human and having desire for warm surroundings and full stomachs.
Remember, Fighting climate change = Saving the Earth.
Coal gas is about a 50:50 mixture of H2 and CO. Deadly. In the US most of those pipes were cast iron and have long since been decommissioned or abandoned in place.
“We evaluate the suitability of using existing natural gas infrastructure for distribution of hydrogen.”
It’s screamingly obvious. NO, it is not suitable. It is not even desirable, because using natural gas for fuel carries no risk of climate harm to begin with from the resulting replenishment of CO2 in the atmosphere.
CO2 increase wil not affect the weather
The real story is all this net zero propaganda is about transferring tax payer currency into political donations by wealthy individuals that receive a lot government contracts. The fact that most of these contracts do not deliver anything useful is all part of the plan.
Tax payer funds -> Government-> net zero contracts -> political donations to politicians
One answer is to stop voting for ones on demise and send them all home every election cycle.
Hire new ones and vote them out as well.
Sounds like you’re recommending term limits. I was in favor of them as well until my better half pointed out that it wouldn’t change anything. The Executive Branch, i.e., what some call the “deep state”, already runs the government, and it is appointed, not elected. Back in 2015-2016 many of the presidential appointees were discussing on the internet how they were going to bury themselves into the civil service at the end of the current administration so they could continue their work on restructuring the economy.
Congress and the Senate have been passing their work to the Executing Branch and their regulators for years now. The legislators are more interested in getting reelected that in governing the country. They pass 1k page laws that no one reads except the regulators, who then write thousands of regulations to enforce their interpretation of each section of each law. Thus, the Executive Branch now does all the detailed work of running the government, and term limits won’t change that.
In my earlier days, we were involved with hydrogen systems, not for power generation, but for government purposes.
Everything had to be stainless steel. Other metals could not be used.
All components had to be custom designed and made, with proper seals, otherwise the system would leak all over the place.
It was a nightmare
The cost was outrageous, but the government was paying.
Trust me, zero items of any existing power system can be used, if hydrogen is the fuel, that includes any distribution piping and underground or aboveground storage.
Duh.
Everyone serious about hydrogen has known this for decades.
If you are going to move hydrogen, it will be as ammonia, methanol, or DME.
… or MCH – methylcyclohexane, There’s probably been an uptick in production of such for missile fuel (JP9), now the US Uniparty has decided that wars are good for the economy.
But methylcyclohexane is mostly carbon. When burned, much of the product is CO2.
True indeed, but the companies most involved in the hydrogen transport aspect of this (Chiyoda and Eneos, in Japan) use toluene to carry the hydrogen as MCH and then take off the hydrogen and recycle back to toluene. Catalytic conversion in both directions is close to 100%.
Totally off topic, but I would like to hear from the notable resources here w/r/t to an article in ZeroHedge “Atlantic Ocean’s Sudden Cooling Baffles Climate Scientists”.
its mostly just snark and Ha Has at the gallery of Climate Doom Cultists, but wading past the We Are All Goin To Die citations is the statement “The Atlantic Ocean is cooling at an exponential rate and nobody is sure why.”
I remember reading multiple articles about how the smog from Pacific Ocean cargo ship trade has an effect on SST or something, so given the persistent Saharan Dust, is this a possible vector?
California’s Hydrogen Highway is now 100% hydrogen free! Another wasteful initiative from the Warmunists.
But many pipes are already in place and working from the 1800s. Remember that the old coal gas was 60-70% hydrogen in any case so the technology has been in place for ages – even down to the gas holders that we used to have in all towns. Yes there may be a need to replace some pipe work and but in general all such have already been changed for natural gas and all the trenches etc are already in place so replacement is very easy.
For hydrogen transport use, all of it will have to be refitted as none of it is fit for service. Your statement about the composition of coal-gas is erroneous. Coal gas was a combination of molecules, all much larger and far less corrosive than H2.
Why did you make the same post 4 times in the thread? You were wrong the first time.
A very apt user name. You provide nothing but erroneous statements.
Maybe a BOT?
BTW, where will the “green” hydrogen come from in sufficient quantity to keep the demonstration town going?
I went to the font of all knowledge, Wikipedia, and looked up town gas. Turns out, according to this article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_gas
towngas is about 50% CO and about 50% hydrogen. No mention of hydrocarbon content. So, not 70%, and not 30% hydrogen.
Hydrogen (H2) dissociates into 2 H+ (2 protons). Protons will diffuse through any material. If the piping has voids (not uncommon in old steel piping) the protons will become H2 again in the steel piping. The equilibrium pressure for this protons to H2 process is several hundred thousand atmospheres. No engineering materials exist which could withstand these pressures. Certain steels will em-brittle when exposed to hydrogen. For hydrogen process systems in semiconductor manufacturing, we typically use orbital welded 316L stainless steel. We use diaphragm or bellows valves to preclude leakage.
Although other materials and valves would work, I believe that if would be unwise to use old natural gas lines. These are typically carbon steel with threaded connections. These would almost certainly leak hydrogen.
Hydrogen molecules are so small that they leak through almost anything as the people on the Hindenburg noticed.
Hydrogen is a key component of the most prominent greenhouse gas, water vapor.
We first need a massive accident. Those greens ignore all sense of reality and keep pushing even if all engineers say something is impossible.
Hydrogen diffusion into steel greatly reduces its tensile strength and makes it extremely brittle. Not good for a highly flammable gas.
As needs to be endlessly repeated, hydrogen is a road to nowhere.
With the prospect of improved battery technology (e.g. aluminium-graphene) giving electric vehicles longer range without the fire risk, hydrogen becomes even more useless.