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Test being done in Teesside of 100% Hydrogen replacement in gas mains

BigTom

BigTom

Well-Known Member
www.gazettelive.co.uk

Gas mains from former Teesside housing estate used to test hydrogen

Northern Gas Networks are conducting the research in the South Bank area
www.gazettelive.co.uk www.gazettelive.co.uk

Northern Gas Networks (NGN) is using a network of existing natural gas mains to carry out standard gas operational procedures under 100% hydrogen conditions for the first time. They will conduct the research on an area of disused land between Ann Street and Harcourt Road in South Bank.

The test site was chosen because around 70 properties were demolished on the land over a decade ago. The gas pipes that once supplied homes on the site are still intact but disconnected from the rest of the network. Two domestic hydrogen boilers, produced by Vaillant and Baxi, have been connected to the network. They will use hydrogen which has been been odourised to smell the same as natural gas for the first time.
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Apparently this is the first time it's been tested in an existing, real world, gas mains system. Really interesting to see what happens here as replacing gas boilers with hydrogen boilers may well be a better solution for heating than heat pumps. Although I still think that a properly built passiv house, with a ground source heat pump, should be the most efficient way to do this, it's not like we are about to replace all our housing stock with new builds to that standard and chucking all those house's heating (even with improved insulation to reduce demand) onto the existing electrical grid might be too much.
30% of UKs GHG emissions is natural gas for heating according to that article, if we could switch this to renewable energy + hydrogen using the existing gas mains, it would make a big difference to climate change. I have no idea how you would handle that change at a technical level, if there are boilers that can burn gas or hydrogen it makes it easy I guess, from a technical point of view. From a financial point of view though would need government to pay to ensure everyone's boilers do get upgraded on any reasonable time scale.
 
Depends on how far they get with "green" hydrogen. At the moment, it's nothing of the sort and a total waste of effort. Being less efficient than just burning gas.
I'm not keen on giving up the instant hot water of a combi boiler for a tank, but I do think heat pumps are much more sensible and efficient in the long run. If people are going to need new boilers for H2 anyhow, I can't see it happening.

Logically, if electricity can be made carbon neutral, then it makes much more sense to send it directly to the home to be turned into heat than to use it to produce H2, store it, distribute it, then burn it in the home where the first law of thermodynamics will tell you it has less energy than the electricity used to make it!
 
platinumsage said:
Conversion from town to natural gas including updating appliances in homes was done in 8 years and the cost added on to people's gas bills.
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Mostly all done over one weekend in the small market town where I lived at the time.
All we had to have done was change the burners in the gas central heating / hot water boiler, but a lot of my friends also cooked with gas. I think it took the fitter somewhat less than quarter of an hour in total, and that included a pressure test.
There were a huge number of fitters, gofers - some on motorbikes - and supply vans all over town ...

A member of my family [an uncle] was heavily involved in arranging & planning the logistics.
 
BigTom said:
www.gazettelive.co.uk

Gas mains from former Teesside housing estate used to test hydrogen

Northern Gas Networks are conducting the research in the South Bank area
www.gazettelive.co.uk www.gazettelive.co.uk



Apparently this is the first time it's been tested in an existing, real world, gas mains system. Really interesting to see what happens here as replacing gas boilers with hydrogen boilers may well be a better solution for heating than heat pumps. Although I still think that a properly built passiv house, with a ground source heat pump, should be the most efficient way to do this, it's not like we are about to replace all our housing stock with new builds to that standard and chucking all those house's heating (even with improved insulation to reduce demand) onto the existing electrical grid might be too much.
30% of UKs GHG emissions is natural gas for heating according to that article, if we could switch this to renewable energy + hydrogen using the existing gas mains, it would make a big difference to climate change. I have no idea how you would handle that change at a technical level, if there are boilers that can burn gas or hydrogen it makes it easy I guess, from a technical point of view. From a financial point of view though would need government to pay to ensure everyone's boilers do get upgraded on any reasonable time scale.
Click to expand...

This has got me wondering - I live near to an area used to testing LPG tanks and other gas-related safety matters, so I expect some of the "noise" aka loud explosions we've been hearing in the recent past were related ...

[The same place did the "would the gunpowder plot have worked ?" programme & yes it did]
 
BigTom - my concern about using Hydrogen, is mainly that leaks would be difficult to deal with, especially from older pipewrok.
The gas networks have enough of a problem finding and dealing with low level leaks ...

A few years ago, one of the old bank branches in Hexham had an explosion in the cellar / basement, which was put down to a slow, almost undetectable, accumulation of gas.
 
Chz said:
Depends on how far they get with "green" hydrogen. At the moment, it's nothing of the sort and a total waste of effort. Being less efficient than just burning gas.
I'm not keen on giving up the instant hot water of a combi boiler for a tank, but I do think heat pumps are much more sensible and efficient in the long run. If people are going to need new boilers for H2 anyhow, I can't see it happening.

Logically, if electricity can be made carbon neutral, then it makes much more sense to send it directly to the home to be turned into heat than to use it to produce H2, store it, distribute it, then burn it in the home where the first law of thermodynamics will tell you it has less energy than the electricity used to make it!
Click to expand...
Indeed, most I think is blue hydrogen so made from natural gas. This is a trial though so no problem with that. (I think the trial will also be looking at private and commercial vehicles and industrial processes - the whole Hydrogen Economy.)

The big difference in the two new approaches for de-carbonising heat is we already have a gas network of about the right scale for heating with hydrogen and most of the network is already upgraded for hydrogen. The electricity grid and distribution networks would need to have about five times as much capacity to carry enough energy to replace the gas networks, which will be a huge undertaking. Heat pumps are great but most houses would need to replace all their radiators as heat pumps tend to run colder than boilers and so you need to increase the rad size to get the same heating effect. It's much cheaper to change the burners in a gas boiler for hydrogen. There is also a problem with salt in the air for air source heat pumps within five miles of the coast - although you can buy adapted versions now to take account of this.

I have no idea which way we will go. We need to pick one (plus a huge programme of insulation for either). Anyone who does know for sure could make a fortune.
 
Chz said:
Depends on how far they get with "green" hydrogen. At the moment, it's nothing of the sort and a total waste of effort. Being less efficient than just burning gas.
I'm not keen on giving up the instant hot water of a combi boiler for a tank, but I do think heat pumps are much more sensible and efficient in the long run. If people are going to need new boilers for H2 anyhow, I can't see it happening.

Logically, if electricity can be made carbon neutral, then it makes much more sense to send it directly to the home to be turned into heat than to use it to produce H2, store it, distribute it, then burn it in the home where the first law of thermodynamics will tell you it has less energy than the electricity used to make it!
Click to expand...
How many people can afford to pay £10k to retrofit a heat pump? I certainly can't.

There is a huge amount of surplus overnight wind electricity that can be used for green hydrogen. Tidal is also ideal for green hydrogen generation.
 
A380 said:
Indeed, most I think is blue hydrogen so made from natural gas. This is a trial though so no problem with that. (I think the trial will also be looking at private and commercial vehicles and industrial processes - the whole Hydrogen Economy.)

The big difference in the two new approaches for de-carbonising heat is we already have a gas network of about the right scale for heating with hydrogen and most of the network is already upgraded for hydrogen. The electricity grid and distribution networks would need to have about five times as much capacity to carry enough energy to replace the gas networks, which will be a huge undertaking. Heat pumps are great but most houses would need to replace all their radiators as heat pumps tend to run colder than boilers and so you need to increase the rad size to get the same heating effect. It's much cheaper to change the burners in a gas boiler for hydrogen. There is also a problem with salt in the air for air source heat pumps within five miles of the coast - although you can buy adapted versions now to take account of this.

I have no idea which way we will go. We need to pick one (plus a huge programme of insulation for either). Anyone who does know for sure could make a fortune.
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Hydrogen. For heat and cars.
 
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Chz said:
It's utterly bonkers for cars. Which is why most carmakers have thrown in the towels. You could make a use case for unelectrified rail freight and possibly very long distance road haulage, but it will never be better than batteries in a passenger vehicle.
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We shall see.
 
Sasaferrato said:
How many people can afford to pay £10k to retrofit a heat pump? I certainly can't.

There is a huge amount of surplus overnight wind electricity that can be used for green hydrogen. Tidal is also ideal for green hydrogen generation.
Click to expand...
It is, effectively, a fancy air conditioner in reverse. The current prices are insane, but there's no reason to expect them to remain so. There is not enough overnight capacity to generate enough power to heat the country on H2, so you're going to be stuck with "blue" hydrogen for a good long while. And it makes no sense to burn perfectly good fuel to make a different one.

This is the whole First Law thing again. If there isn't enough power to heat homes over the grid, then there definitely isn't enough power to generate the needed green H2. Meaning it won't be green and it's a total waste of effort on something that won't really meaningfully cut emissions.
 
Chz said:
It is, effectively, a fancy air conditioner in reverse. The current prices are insane, but there's no reason to expect them to remain so. There is not enough overnight capacity to generate enough power to heat the country on H2, so you're going to be stuck with "blue" hydrogen for a good long while. And it makes no sense to burn perfectly good fuel to make a different one.

This is the whole First Law thing again. If there isn't enough power to heat homes over the grid, then there definitely isn't enough power to generate the needed green H2. Meaning it won't be green and it's a total waste of effort on something that won't really meaningfully cut emissions.
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The hole in your argument is that there is no realistic way, other than hydrogen to use surplus electricity.

I take it that you do know that windfarms are paid NOT to produce when there are widespread windy conditions.

Hydrogen generation by use of tidal power makes perfect sense, because the shift in the time of generation due to tides, makes no odds.

As solar becomes more useful due to greater efficiency in the panels (at present 20% for most domestic panels) that also can be used for hydrogen generation.

Running cars with heavy batteries absolutely defies common sense, to say nothing of the huge risk of fires. Lithium battery scooters have been banned from the London Underground because of battery fires.

 
Chz said:
There is not enough overnight capacity to generate enough power to heat the country on H2, so you're going to be stuck with "blue" hydrogen for a good long while. And it makes no sense to burn perfectly good fuel to make a different one.

This is the whole First Law thing again. If there isn't enough power to heat homes over the grid, then there definitely isn't enough power to generate the needed green H2. Meaning it won't be green and it's a total waste of effort on something that won't really meaningfully cut emissions.
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I did see a method to make H2 from methane that leaves carbon as the waste product instead of CO2 so wouldn't contribute to global warming and much as simply burning methane.
 
WouldBe said:
I did see a method to make H2 from methane that leaves carbon as the waste product instead of CO2 so wouldn't contribute to global warming and much as simply burning methane.
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Generating electricity by wind, solar and tidal, and using the considerable excess to make hydrogen makes absolute sense.

Hydrogen generation gives the opportunity to 'green up' the production of fertiliser also, at the moment the hydrogen is being taken from methane.
 
Sasaferrato said:
Running cars with heavy batteries absolutely defies common sense, to say nothing of the huge risk of fires. Lithium battery scooters have been banned from the London Underground because of battery fires.
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You know you're talking about hydrogen, right? A flammable gas that can form explosive mixtures in air?

As for heaviness, wait till you see how heavy the amount of hydrogen you need to put in a pressurised tank (that leaks its contents because hydrogen atoms are really tiny and like to escape through microfractures in the vessel) in order to drive a vehicle any appreciable distance.
 
I can't find the documents now but I'm pretty all the official scenarios and roadmaps for decarbonising the UK power grid by 2050 involved extensive use of hydrogen in one or more parts of the system, whether in storage and/or transmission. All relying on unproven tech.
 
NoXion said:
As for heaviness, wait till you see how heavy the amount of hydrogen you need to put in a pressurised tank (that leaks its contents because hydrogen atoms are really tiny and like to escape through microfractures in the vessel) in order to drive a vehicle any appreciable distance.
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Cylinders of hydrogen are used regularly in chemistry labs and don't have a problem. :hmm:
 
WouldBe said:
Cylinders of hydrogen are used regularly in chemistry labs and don't have a problem. :hmm:
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You're literally talking about laboratory conditions, which are proverbial in how different they are to rougher, more everyday conditions. A cylinder sitting pretty in a lab is going to be under different stresses to one knocking about inside a motorised vehicle. Most people working in labs have had training on handling pressurised gases and know how to treat them and what not to do. It's probably going to have more emptying/refilling cycles done to it within a shorter amount of time, too.

You don't find many laboratories crashed into shop fronts or wrapped around trees or lamp posts.
 
NoXion said:
You're literally talking about laboratory conditions, which are proverbial in how different they are to rougher, more everyday conditions. A cylinder sitting pretty in a lab is going to be under different stresses to one knocking about inside a motorised vehicle.
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In a lab cylinders will be secured individually however when they are delivered they are delivered by a lorry, bouncing about over uneven roads and they aren't individually secured so will experience more rougher stresses than a cylinder designed to fit in a car and more securely fastened.
 
WouldBe said:
Cylinders of hydrogen are used regularly in chemistry labs and don't have a problem. :hmm:
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There are literally billions of lithium batteries in the world, and problems are extremely rare, statistically speaking.

Tesla has sold 2 million cars and the fire rate is one for every 200 million miles. Far less than petrol powered cars. Batteries are the answer, not hydrogen. Hydrogen burning still creates airborne pollutants that batteries do not. And even though they currently aren't because of scale, lithium batteries are recyclable.

The hydrogen economy is dreamed up by the fossil fuel companies to keep their investments relevant. All it does is feed them.
 
Sasaferrato said:
The hole in your argument is that there is no realistic way, other than hydrogen to use surplus electricity....
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Ammonia production. Technology is extant now and you can use it in diesel ship and generator engines in place of heavy fuel oil with very little modification. No one thinks it's sexy though.
 
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