Hydrogen in the Natural Gas Network
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- Опубліковано 17 тра 2021
- #technology #engineering #stem
Today we hear from Chemical Engineer, Paul Martin, about how easy it is to simply substitute hydrogen into the existing natural gas pipe network, starting with blending in small amounts of hydrogen.
Topics covered include:
01:01 Paul Martin's background as a chemical engineer working with hydrogen technologies since the 1990s
01:56 Blue hydrogen and green hydrogen
02:30 Advantages of natural gas as a fuel
03:06 Disadvantages of natural gas as a fuel - leakage and CO2 emissions
02:53 Blending hydrogen into the natural gas pipe network
04:10 Reduced energy content from blended hydrogen and gas
04:35 Emissions reduction from blending hydrogen into gas networks (it's less than you think!)
05:05 High energy content per unit mass, low energy content per unit volume
05:33 Larger compressors needed to transport hydrogen instead of gas
07:33 Burners will need to be modified at mixes above 20% hydrogen
08:40 Hydrogen leakage
08:52 Safety issues related to hydrogen used in homes
10:36 Enough talk about problems, what about solutions?
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On the suggestion of the Patreon community, I have used the first month's funds to buy a new portable microphone, which you will hear in my next video. Next up I will probably be buying acoustic panels for my home office. So if you are bothered by the echo in this video, or have a different idea how my videos could be improved, I would love to have you as part of the Engineering with Rosie team on Patreon.
Paul's article that I mention several times in the video is here:
Hydrogen to Replace Natural Gas- By the Numbers
/ hydrogen-replace-natur...
And he has several other articles on hydrogen that you should check out if you want more details. Also because they are published on LinkedIn, you can see in the comments what other energy professionals think of his analysis:
/ distilled-thoughts-hyd...
/ ammonia-pneumonia-paul...
/ hydrogen-from-renewabl...
Other interesting resources I used in this video are linked here:
The Engineer's Guide to Plant Layout and Piping Design for the Oil and Gas Industries - Geoff Barker 2018
www.sciencedirect.com/book/97...
www.forbes.com/sites/jimmagil...
www.reuters.com/article/us-cl...
theconversation.com/the-us-na...
www.ge.com/gas-power/future-o...
fuelcellsworks.com/news/heati...
www.theguardian.com/environme...
www.simplyswitch.com/first-uk...
www.dnv.com/oilgas/perspectiv...
reneweconomy.com.au/victoria-...
reneweconomy.com.au/act-to-tr...
Thanks for watching the video Hydrogen in the Natural Gas Network - Наука та технологія
I was going to say as a welder that hydrogen entitlement would be a massive issue. most if not all certified welding procedures worldwide specify low hydrogen electrodes when arc welding high pressure steel pipes. Hydrogen gets into the steel crystalline structure and basically turns it into a brittle sponge much of the natural gas infrastructure is just carbon steel so I could see it being suspectible to this issue.
You are very correct...that was going to be my comment... Besides CO2 is not the problem...water vapor is a much greater green house gas...
@@DavidThompson-gr4gy I have to correct you on your second point here. CO2 has a very long life in the atmosphere, while water vapor is constantly removed by condensation.
Sorry I am late to the discussion. But they can line the pipes with a ceramic "paint". There are companies that make a living relining city water pipes. They have pipe crawling robots with fiber optic video feeds back to the operators. We got some crazy engineered shite!
I assume you meant "embrittlement" but got whacked by a spell checker.
In the Netherlands the natural gas pipelines are certified for hydrogen.
There is no need for a high perssior because the energy in hydrogen is much higher than natural gas.
Nefit and Bosch created a ex change system so there is no need to bay a new heater just a few parts need to be changed so they can switch to Hydrogen
Daf Trucks created a system to use hydrogen in a almost regular combustion engine.
I saw the title and thought - gee that's a bad idea. I watched the video expecting to have my assumptions challenged, but discovered that the problems I was aware of were only the tip of the iceberg. Thanks.
My thoughts was just that, it would be the day I would replace my gas stove with an electrical one.
numbers on hydrogen are not good - only electroless made with excess renewables makes any sense
Paul Martin has very impressive communication skills.
Yes he does! I hope we'll get him back on the channel some time.
@@EngineeringwithRosie GREAT channel!great info well done!
Never knew sophistry was a 'communication skill'.
@@EngineeringwithRosie I did aerospace but have spent the last 30+ years in control systems. I am qualified in what gets call EEHA - Electrical Equipment for Hazardous Areas. In the context of engineering a Hazardous Area is an area that has all the time or part of the time an EXPLOSIVE GAS or EXPLOSIVE DUST mix. It has nothing to do with toxicity, physical hazards, lack of oxygen or anything else.
Its the areas of control systems where we keep gas plants, chemical plants, wheat silos, sugar processing plants,.....etc. from exploding. Of all the things that engineers in my field take most seriously its Hydrogen. Not only does it leak very easily but it ignites very easily.
With gas mixes there is a range of mixing where the mixes is explosive. If there is not enough ignitable gas its wont explode and if there is too much it wont explode as there isn't enough oxygen. We call these points the Lower Explosive Limit (LEL) and Upper Explosive Limit (UEL). When gas first leaks from a pipe or cylinder its 100% and then starts mixing with the air. Once it reaches the UEL it becomes explosive and stays that way until it dissipates enough to be below the LEL.
Methane has an UEL of 16.4% and LEL of 4.4% while Hydrogen has a UEL of 75% and LEL of 4%. That means when Hydrogen leaks and start mixing with air it becomes explosive quite quickly and a lot quicker than methane. It also stays explosive slightly longer as it dissipates.
Then there is the serious issue of hydrogen with ignition energy. Ignition energy is the minimum amount of energy that is required to get something to ignite. The minimum ignition energy for hydrogen is 0.019 mJ while for most hydrocarbons it is around 0.1mJ (approximately 5 times higher).
So not only does a Hydrogen leak become explosive far quicker and stay explosive longer it takes about 1/5th the energy to go bang. That means everything we do electrically around hydrogen has to be specifically designed for hydrogen and there are some big traps in those areas.
If you want to discuss further let me know.
@@tonywilson4713 Thanks for adding this great detail!
I recently discovered your channel and really appreciate the soundness of the engineering, pragmatism and non-preachy presentation. A real breath of fresh air,
Several problems: First, hydrogen will leak from a network when it was leak proof with the larger natural gas molecule. Second, natural gas has a very wide explosive range. Even a tiny leak will form an explosive mixture in air. Third, it takes an extremly low energy spark to ignite hydrogen. I think the better solution is to store renewable energy sources as hydrogen at the source then transmitt the energy as electricity.
Natural gas explodes easily. Meanwhile those building hydrogen cars are finding that because hydrogen disperses from a leak or fractured tank so fast that they haven't managed to blow up a car yet, despite resorting to firing a bullet into it.
I'd make the we have already done this 150 years ago Mike and Melbourne didn't blow up with a 50% H2 mix. It was all quite doable with 19th century technology so I think you are overstating problems if we could do it back then.
Using hydrogen to plug the gaps in electricity supply is the aim, however because batteries aren't the answer hydrogen is needed. There's new answers appearing daily, especially molecular structures that can hold, store large volumes of gas and quickly release on demand.
@@edwardvine207 Agree. Especially if natural hydrogen reserves are found. A large area around Adelaide is being explored for naturally occurring hydrogen. The geological structure there is likely to have such reserves. Australia Gas Networks are injecting 10% Hydrogen in three areas of Australia. There is always ammonia NH3.
I LOVE this guy Paul Martin! We are both chemical engineers, and we have both the exact same opinion! He is much better than me at communicating, but that's even greater!
Thanks Rosie, for having given us the privilege of hearing what Paul has to say!
Finally someone with some sense talking about this topic! How refreshing! The other thing no one talks about is the different hazardous area classifications between traditional hydrocarbons and hydrogen. Most hydrocarbons are Group D chemicals (the least restrictive type of flammables) but hydrogen is a Group B chemical. That's not an insignificant challenge because hydrogen has a very low minimum ignition energy, so low that just venting it out of a pipe to atmosphere will catch it on fire due to the friction.
It also burns with an invisible flame when purified so you can't even see it when it does catch on fire. Handling it is industrially is very plausible and already heavily done, but expecting the average person to handle hydrogen without incident is a tall order and not one that will end without some loss of life.
Thanks also from my side for grapping up this important topic and especially Paul for the REALISTIC view on this hyped topic.
However, I think your summary of "its all solvable with a bit more money" is not what Paul told and what I learnd as researcher for several years on this topic, specificly since some issues go way deeper than the discussed surface level. Since repurposing pipelines for hydrogen is so dangerous, all old building where the original construction plans are not available would probably have to undergo an extensive check of all old pipelines or put new ones under the wall to be SURE that no leakage will occure. Further, hydrogen is "un-smellable" and so would need an odorant: however, this is extremly complicated for the (very light) hydrogen molecules and would also prohibit all usage of fuel cells down the line. Futhermore, hydrogen the pressure of hydrogen can be changed between 300 and 20 bar without significant heating or cooling, but relaxing it from 20 to 1 bar environental pressure leads to a significant cooling that would freez the walls if the gas is not significantly pre-heated. ALso, Paul is very right, that it is practically impossible to increase the hydrogen contend step-by-step to 100% so it would need a (unrealtistic) "switching-day" when natural gas is completly substituted by hydrogen. Then, hydrogen requires 3 times the electricity for the compressors in the grid, which quickly becomes a substantial electricity consuption. The list goes on and on...but the media typically ignores this list of issues raised by most expert in this field for the convenience of a simple dream-story.
Hydrogen leakage could be enormously problem??!
Since hydrogen is tiny and can be passed through even the smallest openings, this means that the leak already present in natural gas would be incomparably higher - and when you add 3/4 times higher pressure in infrastructure - the leak could create huge losses.
I am working on a offshore city and spent a couple years crunching the numbers for everything including energy , and if I learned anything , you have to put real numbers to the problems , and not have any preconceptions about the results. Another thing I learned was how really amazing results you can achieve by going beyond what is normally considered "economically viable" efficiency improvements.
please elaborate, what were the conclusions?
I expect it is an ROI type of calculation you were doing. As you get smaller gains it takes much longer to get a payback. eg if new equipment gave you a 50% saving and the pay back period was 2 years thats great. If you only got 10% then payback would 10 years - not so great. If the payback is longer than the lifetime of equipment you never get a payback.
In work I was doing I had to get a payback in 6 months to get funded. Understand your frustration with economic limits because I had them too.
If you are who I think you are, you are brilliant. Ahahah I think I’ve heard about you in my younger years as a teenager, building futuristic city plans. Am I right? There is most definitely real potential in hydrogen, considering it is so abundant on earth.
@@lluuccasexperiencia7373 I don't know if anyone has heard about me , I did do a lot of research on Ammonia as a way to fuel air conditioners ( A truck would deliver Propane during the winter and the same truck would deliver Ammonia during the summer) I had a partner and we built a factory to produce the Ammonia fueled air conditioners and on Christmas eve 24 years ago the security guard asked for the night off to be with his family, I said "ok" and the factory was cleaned out , the project never recovered.
@@rictechow231 I was looking at an entire city of 10,000 people. You could do things like have a free central laundry service that used the waste heat from the main power plant to heat the water , instead of electricity and 4000 individual washers and dryers , and have lower overall costs even though you are offering a free service .
I agree with basically everything he said. "jetted" is referring to the fixed orifices that are used to regulate gas volume through a device. They are in every gas appliance and pressure regulators among other uses. They would all have to be changed, aside from the down rated performance of the appliances. This would be expensive but very complicated as you'd have to do it for every appliance in the grid that was converted. So I agree that mixing hydrogen in isn't going to work at well. From a safety standpoint, like he said, hydrogen is notoriously hard to contain. The majority of the last mile of NG pipeline networks including almost all piping inside homes are mechanically fitted. (IE threaded and crimped.) I suspect that leakage rates would dramatically increase, causing plenty of panic. (odorization should keep accidents down but won't completely prevent them.) Some jurisdictions have extremely restrictive regulations. (Ontario, where I live, is one of them.) I honestly don't see the regulatory authorities moving any faster then geological speeds.
For the electric heating, that is more of a problem for existing neighbourhoods in cold weather areas that use NG. Since the infrastructure was built with natural gas supplies in mind, electrical infrastructure isn't built to handle the full heating load on top of the normal peak loads. We would have to upgrade entire sections of the electricity grid along with additional power sources. That's considering heat pump usage. On top of that, heat pumps are much more expensive to repair. It's not a limiting factor, but something to consider. While they use gases that can be harmful to the environment, losses are extremely low in some jurisdictions and isn't really a factor.
Side note : comfort heating is an essential service in cold weather areas. It very well can be life and death depending on the situation. Even Texas is aware of this now.
After all that, consider that methane is most often a byproduct of oil extraction. There are some dedicated fields extracting NG, but it's not as common in North America. Burning methane is far better then releasing it to the atmosphere. The greenhouse potential of methane is far greater then carbon dioxide. Capturing methane from leaking fields will help substantially. Having a convenient way of consuming that energy is most efficient. (Although I still see NG volumes significantly dropping in hr future. Especially in places where it is imported from deep natural gas fields.)
In order to keep our bodies warm, we heat the whole house. That is not an engineering solution!
@@Tensquaremetreworkshop and your solution is? No one is wearing a snowsuit inside.
@@SuperS05 Actually, in parts of China, they do. And leave their doors open, even in Winter...
Suits heated with either fluid or electric resistance have been designed. Might not seem ideal, but when the alternative is the destruction of the planet...
I consume 2MWh of electricity per annum, and generate 4MWh (solar). Heating my house takes 12MWh of gas. Something has to move...
@@Tensquaremetreworkshop insulating a house well is far easier then convincing people to wear think snow suits inside, and have no running water. It's not hard to get the energy use down enough to have passive heat gain. It's just not cheap
@@SuperS05 It is not just a matter of cost- in the UK we have a large number of old houses that cannot be sensibly insulated (even if it was legal). With most houses, it would be cheaper to re-build. It has taken 200 years to build the current stock- how long to rebuild- while still continuing building 300K new houses a year? Add doing it carbon neutral, and that universe does not exist. Insulating bodies is way more manageable.
Super video....definitely raises a lot of issues on the hydrogen/methane blending in the transmission/distribution systems.
Very informative, Rosie! So far I'd only heard of mixing H2 into the natural gas grid as a way to find a use for electricity from wind, solar and hydro sources during periods of low domestic demand. At night for example, the renewable electricity would be used for electrolysis and the hydrogen produced fed into the gas grid. The 14% reduction in calorific value would not be welcome by operators of gas engines either. It's well documented that even without H2 blending natural gas quality can vary from minute to minute and even second to second, causing knocking and misfiring and potentially severe engine damage.
There is also the issue of NOx emissions when burning hydrogen in an air mixture. Another pollutant for the atmosphere that never seems to be mentioned in the videos for hydrogen combustion engines such as those proposed by JCB.
I'm pretty sure that the products of combustion are H2O (water) not pollution when burning hydrogen.
@@russellclark9419 Unfortunately not. When burning hydrogen it has to be mixed with air which is 70% nitrogen hence you get Nitrous Oxide produced. Reducing the amount of air in the mixture reduces the NOx but it also reduces the power output. If you had a separate pure oxygen supply to mix with the hydrogen then there would be no NOx produced. There are many you tube videos on this issue. I think you are talking about hydrogen fuel cells which do discharge water and some heat but don’t actually burn the hydrogen so no NOx is produced.
Excellent informative video Rosie. And Paul. Thank you. I believe some of Pauls conclusions are worth exploring with an open mind. But the difficulties presented for Hydrogen substituting into the NG network are considerable, and this is the key message that I found useful. Yes, I think embrittlement will be a very important piece as well. But also the ammonia aspect. there is much to unpack here. Distributed generation of hydrogen, and distributed storage of hydrogen, and many more. Storage at 700 bar is really not attractive, so ammonia, but yes, renovation of the Haber Bosch process - there seems to be some good developments in this area recently. My own interest is in seasonal storage. Solar PV is cheap now. But storage is still a big deal. So I'm exploring hydrogen production and storage for remote sites. We are talking about smaller amounts, so lower pressures, and perhaps ammonia will be involved. All the best to all the engineers here !
Thanks for highlighting these points 👍
Thank you, Rosie and Paul for your thoughtful insights.
this guy is so intelligible!!! he sounds super smart with great ideas our politicians need to listen to him. thanks for sharing this interviiew!
I was impressed by the comments starting at about 11:50 where Paul mentions over-provision of natural energy sources (such as wind and PV but also potentially tide and wave power) then storing the energy in the form it is initially presented by which he presumably means electricity using e.g. batteries. We could of course convert the energy into hydrogen or ammonia and store it locally to that conversion plant until it is needed to generate electricity when the wind doesn't blow and sun doesn't shine. This avoids the main problem with hydrogen - its transport.
Thanks. Nice video. The summary at the end was very helpful 👌.
The various grades of "Town Gas" types of gas from coal had hydrogen contents from 20 - 50%.
It also contained a lot of carbon monoxide, so much like hydrogen, it would never be approved for home use by today's fire chiefs.
great vid. Informative and well presented. Really enjoying the content on your channel, Rosie. Cheers!
Great article. What was not mentioned was that we could use "green" hydrogen to make ammonia .Ammonia boils at -33OC at atmospheric pressure. World production of ammonia is 150 million tons per year. 18 to 20 million tons of liquid ammonia are transported by sea each year. Green ammonia could replace the present production of ammonia from fossil fuels with no major changes in infrastructure. Ammonia can be used as a fuel for marine and stationary prime movers.
It is a far more logical fuel than hydrogen.
Great video, but I would have liked to hear Paul's view on the viability of using ammonia to transport hydrogen, both directly and indirectly someday? Which seems to address most of the issues of piping hydrogen by itself or with NG. Not really need now, but long term when it is, it seems like the the best option.
Other than that Paul pointed out 99% the issues (including embrittlement) that I was thinking about prior to watching the video. Echoing Paul's line of reasoning. For now we should actually be focused increasing the use of NG, to replace dirtier fossil fuels such as coal. It's far more efficient and cheaper way of reducing all types of pollution, for now. And NG peaker plants are the best short term option for allowing great use of renewables such as wind to power the grid. NG should be the last fossil fuel to be replaced
Strangely. Paul seemed to be wrong about one thing, that there are no costs (ie regs) on NG leakage. There have be for a long time and the allowed leakage was just readjusted down back Obama levels. Now we just have start to add cost for cow methane production (not a joke).
Several people have commented on ammonia for hydrogen transport. I can see I need to make a video on that!
Interesting what you say about methane leakage being charged (in the US?), I will need to look that up.
For cow/ other animal methane production, my ideas are that we need to 1 - reduce meat consumption, 2 - eat much more kangaroo meat (not a joke) and 3 - maybe lab grown meats? I personally love dairy so much it will be amongst the last things I give up in the name of the environment, though I have reduced the amount of meat I eat by a lot.
@@EngineeringwithRosie Clarification, I was talking about "methane leakage regs" that fine producers and pipelines in the USA and the costs associated with it. Not a tax/charge, like what is done in some places on carbon emissions. Below is a link...
www.cnbc.com/2021/04/28/senate-restores-obama-era-regulation-of-methane-emissions.html.
BTW If I started to eating kangaroo, it would make my aussie friends hopping mad. And since I rarely eat meat (about a year ago), expect for fish occasionally it's not really an issue for me. But there are feed additives that drastically reduce the methane farting. It just costs more money and there is no economic incentive for the cattle farmer to pay more. So we are back to econ and politics being the issue, not tech.
its kinda ironic that cows produce plenty of ammonia for hydrogen transport... it's the circle of life I guess...
Paul's article about ammonia: www.linkedin.com/pulse/ammonia-pneumonia-paul-martin/?trackingId=5liHkbqYRnCxahTEVeCggw%3D%3D
The US already seems to have enough natural gas power plants to use as peaker plants for renewables and now that the cost of wind and solar are at parity or even cheaper than natural gas it is getting more practical to use them to replace coal rather than natural gas so we are probably within a couple of years of peak demand for natural gas and are nearing the end of the period where natural gas is comparativly clean.
AICHE has two chemical safety sections, one for hydrogen and every chemcial industry but Ammonia, and one for Ammonia. That should give us an an idea about how nasty and dangerous it is to handle Ammonia without having to search for the large number of industrial accidents every year, still. Now, take that out of agricultural/industrial application and into the hands of Joe down the block.
Another problem with hydrogen could be that it actually acts as a greenhouse gas. Methane leaking from natural gas pipelines can easily reduce the climate benefit of making less CO2 per kwh than coal or oil. Hydrogen ( H2 ) is not itself a greenhouse gas, but it's almost inevitable that such a tiny molecule will leak more than CH4. Eventually the fugitive hydrogen will oxidise to water vapour, which would make little difference at sea level, but if a lot of it rises up past the tropopause to the normally dry stratosphere, it could trap even more outgoing heat than methane would. The H2O molecule is highly polar, and its vibrational modes absorb different wavelengths than CH4. Increasing its concentration at higher altitudes is like putting a thicker blanket over the earth. Hydrogen would also react with hydroxyl radicals, possibly increasing the average lifetime of methane in the air, and with ozone, weakening our ultraviolet sun shield.
The other problem with Hydrogen and blending in gas supplies is cost. If done properly (using truly green hydrogen or blue with at least 90% effective CCS) the cost is prohibitive because of inherent inefficiencies. Hydrogen may have some limited applications but I believe it is being promoted by the fossil fuel industry to delay the decline in fossil fuel use and divert attention away from investment in other forms of energy storage that are cleaner, cheaper and more efficient. These include chemical and mechanical batteries, pumped hydro, compressed air, molten salt plants, etc. Electric vehicles for example have the potential to provide vast energy storage with Vehicle to Grid connectivity.
Bingo, it's selling hope-ium to create confusion in the public consensus making.
Brilliant video Rosie! You're our dose of reality amongst all the hydrogen madness! That must have been such an interesting chat and I wholeheartedly agree with your concluding remarks.
I think that Paul has a good point about focousing on the low hanging fruit like Ammonia production first. From there it seems to me that baseload powerstations could also start producing and storing hydrogen to sell to fertilizer manufacturers, blimp enthusiasts or others. They could produce hydrogen when there is too much wind, water or sun filling the grid supply. Storing the hydrogen deep underwater in balloons seems like a good option to me. It is ideal for seasonal energy storage
This is a very eye-opening video, thank you so much for making and sharing it guys. I still find myself wondering about using some of the existing network for applications where energy flow through the pipes is not critical, e.g. hydrogen filling stations. Hydrogen, or a synthetic fuel derived from hydrogen, are bound to be used in some hard-to-decarbonise applications such as aviation, shipping and possibly haulage, and any filling station is going to need to compress the gas or liquify it far beyond the energy density of what goes through the pipes.
The situation I'm imagining is a site with some on-site electricity generation (e.g. solar PV panels), an on-site electrolyser that generates some of the consumed hydrogen, electricity and hydrogen gas feeds from the grid, a compressor/liquifier, a storage tank and dispensers. Depending on the state of the grid and its supply/demand, the hydrogen going into the compressor can come from the on-site electrolysis (powered by on-site generation and/or the grid) or from the gas grid. I can even imagine some situations where it might even be economical to put a fuel cell on site and generate electricity - naturally, the round-trip efficiency is lousy, but if the grid is not very stable an is in a serious dunkelflaute and wholesale prices are super-high, it might be worth it.
I'm probably talking nonsense, but it seems crazy to me to transport hydrogen in cylinders *at all* when we have a piping grid in the ground already.
RIGHT! I feel like theres GOTTA be a way to use the existing pipes, retro fit them maybe, and keep natural gas. Is it that difficult to just have carbon capture devices on all gas burning appliances? Gotta be a solution so we can do this as intelligently as possible.
@@calebray4168 Methane seems the way to transport the Hydrogen aroud due to leakage and pressure issues, so the "on site electrolysis approach" seems a good aproach? As fascinated as I am with the fuel cell technology I think it will be limited to trucks... I guess the electrolysis in the refilling stations will be fed during peak renewable energy times. After watching this video y guess we are "stuck" with electric cars for our daily commutes. Industry I guess will have to resort to on site pyrolisis do you think?
Brilliant video. I'm looking at renovating a house and one option is to demolish and rebuild (higher quality walls & insulation), get rid of the gas boiler, and use a heat pump for heating/cooling (also a massive tax break for doing this as opposed to renovating). 12 months ago I was thinking that, given a large renewable overbuild, maybe SNG could replace fossil methane (renewable power and, instead of using batteries to store excess power, the UK has over 4 bcm, or 41.86 TWh storage capacity in the old gas pipes, which shouldn't go to waste). I was wondering about the idea of hydrogen in the gas pipes for the last few months, and now I think it's fossil fuel's last hurrah.
They also didn't get into the H2 imbrittlement of certain components. I'm all for H2 but I think it's more of a last mile fuel, kind of like how gasoline is produce relatively close to the region it will be used in and not sent through cross continent pipelines.
Just build a passivehouse so your heat load is tiny (mostly hot water), and easily supplied by a very small heat pump. Max space heat load in the depths of winter 1-2kW. Vast majority of the time incidental heat is sufficient, and it's cool in summer too so long as you get the overhangs and glazing fraction right. You can do this by retrofit too (I have), but it's never quite as good without spending more money than just building a new one properly. It's ever so nice to live in, with very stable temperatures and great air quality.
yes. There is an industrially proven process for making methane from hydrogen and carbon dioxide. It consumes a lot of energy, but the resulting methane is a much better fuel than hydrogen. Using captured carbon dioxide the cycle of production and burning becomes carbon neutral
This is a real eye-opener for me. Quite a few companies are touting hydrogen as a real green alternative in the future, but it’s a tiny atom, hard to store, pipes keep leaking, it doesn’t give the same energy as natural gas, storing it under huge pressure can be lethal, just have a look at the bad experiences Norway has had with hydrogen. I’m hopeful many of the problems will be dealt with in the near future, our planet depends on this and every other measure to reduce the effects of global warming.
This was a great video, very informative, very well produced and it certainly gave me lots to ponder over. Thank you Rosemary.
Fascinating topic. Well done video. Keep making them!
very nice balancing fuel saving and also no more polution by the system,
Perfect and practical analysis
My opinion would be creating mini ammonia factory every where in each farm attached with solar panels
And using it as fertilizer and fuel
I am surprised, given your background in materials and mechanical engineering, that you didn't discuss hydrogen-induced cracking (HIC) in existing pipeline infrastructure. Is HIC a concern?
Yeah I was thinking the same. How will those old pipes combat hydrogen embrittlement
She did mention it at the end (14:00), but yes, that seems like a large issue trying to convert infrastructure for things it wasn't designed for.
@@muzairanwar TLDR; They won't combat Hydrogen induced cracking in these pipes. The existing metal pipes will not be used with hydrogen
District heating is a good third option. Trained technicians can burn hydrogen for electricity and heat in a controlled location, and distribute the waste heat to surrounding buildings. Combined heat and power systems are already popular in some regions.
"distribute the waste heat" that always puts a penalty on optimizing a process. If you happen to reduce the wasted heat by 50% the neighborhood is going cold.....
"Trained technicians can burn hydrogen for electricity and heat"
I don't think that makes sense. Why not just burn the natural gas directly for electricity and/or heat?
@@Nerd3927 That's not a realistic worry. Heat engines cannot reduce their waste heat below the Carnot limit.
District heating is fantastic where it makes sense. A lot of data centres are being built in Scandinavia because they can use the waste heat for district heating (half of the year). One of my first videos was on that topic, at some waste heat to district heating projects in Denmark:
ua-cam.com/video/F3mC_TaJk2U/v-deo.html
@@seneca983 for example, in the Netherlands, natural gas is used for heating and electricity 9 months of the year and emissions per capita are high. To meet climate goals, the Netherlands could use imported green hydrogen from North Africa for district heating and electricity, instead of natural gas.
Great video. Agree completely in hydrogen blending issues like compressor station upgrades and embrittlement/leakage. Not sure how much lifecycle emissions are actually reduced for blue hydrogen because there are still upstream emissions for nat gas production upstream of SMR, even if there is CCS of CO2 from the reforming process
Good points. I will be making more videos about blue hydrogen and CCS in the next few months, so I will look into the issues you raised in those. Thanks for the comment!
Awesome video, such a concise and easy to understand speaker in Paul. Nicely complemented by Rosie’s segways. Top job, well done
Excellent, concisely communicated video! We need more presenters like you guys.
Power to methane is also an option. It is not very efficient but you can use power from production peaks (windy and sunny day) when power is virtually free.
Your best ever, keep it up! I thought I knew a little about this topic but I learned a lot.
Thanks Tomas! Paul is turning out to be a UA-cam hit, I expect we can convince him back on the channel some time to tackle another topic 😀
Very good. I worked at PETROBRAS for my whole profissional live and for me H2 was a natural way to replace CH4 using the already existing infraestruture of natural gas pipelines. I was wrong unfortunately. But there is others means to store H2 using metal oxides em disc like kassets. I learned a lot about the subject of the possible application of the natural gas grid to transport H2, so thanks a lot.
Excellent summary of the crux of the natural gas/hydrogen debate!
Brilliant, been wondering about the hydrogen excitement.... some very salient facts there. Thanks Rosie (and Paul).👍
its a scam not at all excitable, big oil cant face the fact that it is no longer wanted, also given that methane is 84 per cenr more destructive than co2 the use of methane is speeding up global warming at an alarming rate
Thanks for the video. Really insightful
Thanks Rosie, nice video, i got a lot of questions answered
Great summary. Very useful.
Great video. Both informative and entertaining. I agree with the many challenges of democratizing hydrogen in both methane blends and pure HP cylinders. It makes sense in a secure industrial context for steels, fertilizers, etc that need hydrogen feed. NOT for private cars parked inside buildings. Also, hydrogen is not « a plug and play » substitute for methane - you can’t even start-up many existing gas turbines with more than a few % hydrogen. You may need a separate start up fuel since the combustors are not designed for these flame speeds.
Canada’s gov. Is being lobbied into subsidizing blue, er, brownish, hydrogen. Mostly by fossil fuel investors protecting their investments. I’ll keep this vid handy for the next time I hear about our ‘hydrogen future.’
I like your brief point about keeping energy in its most efficient or harnessed form, that I’ld like to hear more about.
Thank you.
An excellent video, very good explanation why hydrogen is not really an alternative in house heating. As my favorite energy writer, Mr. Vaclav Smil said that the biggest problem with see with hydrogen is that we cannot use it incrementally. We have to replace furnaces, compressors, even some cases pipes in order to implement this gas, cannot really use a lot of things from the already existing infrastructure. Further problems like generating green hydrogen is also arising as it is currently a highly inefficient process with over 80% losses, while current technologies are based primarily on constant supply of electricity and stable current, which intermittent renewable energy cannot provide. Honestly I do not understand the stock exchange hype about these technologies.
Rosie, Many thanks for this interesting video on the problems of hydrogen.
Mr. Martin believes that the way forward is to use and store energy in the form it is created. The problem for electricity is firstly that so far we have no commercial way of storing it, particularly over a period of a few days, and secondly the electrification of everything will be a mammoth task - a Cambridge professor of engineering has calculated that to electrify just the UK’s vehicle fleet will take the annual production of the World’s supply of Lithium, Cobalt, Copper etc..and the estimated cost to convert the UK home gas boilers to heat pumps and upgrade the National Grid is put at £300bn.
I think a better idea is to use biogas - green methane/natural gas because (briefly) :
1) It can be produced with low technology everywhere in the World using anaerobic digesters working with food/human/animal waste - and with just grass of which we have plenty. A by-product is green fertiliser.
It can also be produced using excess electricity from renewables (wind and solar) using hydrolysis to produce the hydrogen and using CO2 from the air via the Sabatier process. This process is helpfully exothermic and takes CO2 from the atmosphere, definitely a plus point. A by-product is oxygen, which is also useful.
2) The technology and infrastructure already exists to store, distribute and burn methane/natural gas to provide heating for homes (18m existing gas boilers in the UK) and cars/HGVs can be easily converted to run on methane/natural gas. Note that BEVs are currently unable to successfully power large vehicles such as HGVs.
It is also safe to use.
I would like to see please another video with Mr. Martin with his views on using methane. The hydrolysis and Sabatier processes may not be very efficient but does this matter if the electricity would be going to waste and the biogas can be easily stored/distributed/used?
I follow Mr. Martin and know some of his views on some of these questions, on which I agree (for the little that is worth, though I am also a chemical engineer). First off, there is no lack of lithium in the world. Just the amount of lithium that has been mined, etc. And there are environmental and labor (Forced labor / Congo, for example) challenges on getting the lithium and other materials out of the ground, etc. 2nd - Mr. Martin has been vocal in the idea of maintaining gas plants to use for the 2 weeks/year (perhaps , approx.) that wind and solar don't provide the electricity we need. He also is a proponent of biofuels for aviation and other uses, and electrifying everything we can.
Thanks, Rosie for the informative video.
I'm also in the electrify everything camp but want to ask what about synthetic natural gas produced renewably instead of hydrogen in existing pipelines/home heating systems?
Great coverage of the topic, and very well presented. I'm really enjoying your channel, keep it up.
Thanks, I'm glad you're enjoying it 😊
Very informative, thanks for the vid.
Hydrogen floating in water is easily to be delivered in
silicon/glass pipes separately without mix.
It should be up to the end users to mix this hydrogen
with other fuels or not for various usages.
Thank you, i work as a storage and compression technician for a gas company in the US im very interested in the future of natural gas and what that means for my job.
Thanks for bringing up leakage. Wish you talked more about it and how the present system is not built ...the entire thing....for the small hydrogen atom compared to methane.
Well summarized the real problems in the present world. Thanks for the great video.
The critique of hydrogen centers around that it is tough and expensive to pipe hydrogen with the same energy content as for natural gas though a network designed for NG.
However, we won't need to, reduced energy value is fine.
In the UK for instance most heating both industrial and residential is currently done with gas, with the (costed) plan being to replace NG with hydrogen produced from wind turbines.
But to hit GHG targets, everything from house insulation to heat pumps and loads of other tech will be needed.
So the demand for a straight replacement of NG with hydrogen will not be there, and reduced volumes for which a strategically but limited upgrading and reinforcement, notably in storage, will be needed will cover the volumes needed just fine.
I think there are also some other issues with blending hydrogen. One is when you have cryogenic peak-shaving plants in the network. The peak shaving plant would not be able to liquefy the hydrogen due to its much lower boiling point.
Also in storage tanks I think the hydrogen, being lighter will slowly separate from the methane so if the gas is standing for some time in the tank the hydrogen will accumulate at the top and the methane at the bottom. I'm not 100% sure about this as I don;t know to what extent diffusion would keep the gases mixed.
A third issue I see might exist is the embrittlement of the steel pipes and valves by the hydrogen though I'm not sure if this occurs also when the hydrogen is diluted in methane.
Great discussion and insight from an industry expert. It appears we are quite a long way from energy transitioning in realistic means. I have been looking closely at historical climate data over the past 4 years and honestly think the "crisis" part of climate crisis is way overblown. I wish this specific topic was explored with the openness that the challenges of green energy were discussed.
When I was a kid, we had coal gas which I think contained hydrogen. I was mystified about this magic wand we had that lit the stove by inserting the end into the gas burner. When we converted to natural gas this wand didn't work.
When I learned more about chemistry I suspected this wand contained a tiny wire of platinum or palladium which acted as a catalyst and ignited the hydrogen component.
If hydrogen was introduced into the gas main such a wand will work again. Alas this was 55 years ago and I don't have this wand any more. Perhaps this is available elsewhere in the world which might have hydrogen in the gas main, be it coal gas or otherwise.
really highlights we've been here before long time ago.
Very informative video and UA-cam Channel 👍
A possible way to solve much of the issues addressed in this video might be the conversion of Hydrogen and CO2 into Methane. This can be done as a form of biogas upgrading. The CO2 fraction that is formed in biogas systems can so be removed resulting in a higher calorific gas and more gas. Methane has a higher energy content per volume then Hydrogen and can be used through existing pipelines.
Interesting research articles about this subject are:
Production of high-calorific biogas from food waste by integrating two approaches: Autogenerative high-pressure and hydrogen injection. (Kim et al 2021)
Recent progress towards in-situ biogas upgrading technologies. (Zhao et al 2021)
Excellent explainer - many thanks!
Very insightful! Thank you!
Glad to see you making a good distinction between weight and volume. When I am talking to people about hydrogen this is a big point of confusion, because it has more energy by WEIGHT than anything else, volume is another story. However, adding hydrogen to methane is like adding ethanol, not water, to gasoline. The real value of hydrogen is large scale utility storage where it doesn't matter how big the storage unit is (Lake Meade is really big!), and maybe aircraft where weight is everything.
Thank you. What a great video!
Just found this channel and wow it is really great. I love this stuff. I subscribed right away !!! But even a 5% use of Hydrogen in a Natural gas mixture going into pipes provides a hotter (more efficient) and cleaner gas flame. You do not need 20% because 5% will work just fine. Thanks for your video !!
This channel is much better than those Have a Think about Undecided channels
Hello Rosie, I really like your videos, the subject was touched briefly, but why cant we burn nat gaz to produce electricity and collect the co2 emissions at the source. How big would be the commercial loss for that. It could work for any kind of fuel that we burn even coal (we would need to take care of ther emmissions as well)
Great video! The conversation was (rightfully so) focused on introduction of H2 in the „NG pipeline network of today“, hence you considered the final consumer to be eg a boiler in a private home.
I’d be curious to understand how the narrative changes if the (one day unused, according to Paul) NG pipelines were to distribute H2 to industrial consumers (fertilizer plants, Steel producers, Hydrogen Refueling Stations, ...)?
Unless I’m missing something, some key downsides discussed in the video would be „less applicable“.
Thanks in advance!
Not only is energy per volume abysmal with hydrogen, but the hydrogen molecule is so small that the leakage problem will increase. You might could add up to 20% hydrogen at some point, but if the distribution network leaks the smaller molecules it won't be there at the customers' meters.
You can synthesize methane. Maybe work on making that more cost effective and green.
Dale Vince from Ecotricity is on about making Biogas from grass so Co2 neutral so we can still use our current boilers and pipe network, can you look into if this would work?
Wow, Paul is great, like you.
What about HHO mixed with air on demand on site. Would it work if the whole system was corrosion proof?
Great value in these videous....excelent. Great for ''low energy state'', when dry theory is not hard to consume, but want value from your free time actions.
Ha! That's a great way to describe it: "low energy state". That's how I watch UA-cam too 😊
Very important topic for the UK at the moment looking into the near future. Hydrogen is the only half-viable alternative to heat pumps. Making it work on the existing gas grid infrastructure would have huge economic benefit.
I have seen this a long time ago, but forgot to comment.
Another mindblowing video (Y)
Super interesting! So relevant and yet not covered by the normal media. Dont want to say mainstream. Dont like the connotation the word has and associations it revokes. What i mean is, that this stuff might be covered in topic specific papers, but not in the media most of us consume.
Awesome, thank you that is really great feedback!
Congrats on an excellent interview. I'm all for reducing carbon emissions, but it must be done in a realistic way.
Unfortunately, proposals like the Green New Deal are severely lacking when it comes to this kind of engineering realism.
A perfect explanation of why there is no such thing as a pure engineering solution to climate change, from an engineer in the industry. Climate change is about Political Economy, first and foremost.
Climate change is a problem which CAN have a technological solution but CANNOT be solved without an economic solution put in place to make it pay. So yes, dead right- it is all about political economy.
Great and informative as always! =)
Subscribed. Love your video Rosie, looking forward to more great content.
BTW, there are some conceptual projects going on in Croatia to use excess wind power (then our pumped hydro reservoirs are full) to generate hydrogen by electrolysis and add it into natural gas pipelines, at pretty small concentration.
I wonder wouldn't it better to build large redox flow batteries instead...
Very insightful videos and packed with bits of information. I recently found it, loved it keep it up! Commenting for the Algorithm! :D
Ohh this is very interesting. I want to add one thing: The existing boilers and burners used in the Netherlands have to use very low BTU (Wobbe index) gas, because the gas from our gas fields (particularly in Groningen and the North Sea which field are now nearly empty) is of very low caloric value and our network and machines have been built around this. So, if we import gas of higher caloric content, we have to mix in nitrogen to make the gas of lesser quality! I see a great opportunity of mixing in hydrogen instead of nitrogen in our use-case!
but fix those leaks first. the reason Hydrogen embrittles steel is it leaks/passes through solid steel walls, knocking off electrons along the way. We use Helium in industry to detect leaks as it's so much more penetrating than hydrocarbon gases, and hydrogen makes helium look like it's a sealant, not a leak detection gas.
great report - Thanks - wind and solar - no water needed - flow battery grid storage - LFP battery for home storage / transportation - All do able Now
Could there be away of producing the hydrogen as you need it to mix with the natural gas as opposed to storing it .say in the boiler .like in a combined cylinder and boiler
Hi, thanks for the great content! I guess there is only a finite amount of water on the earth? If we use it as a source to create fuel? Would this not reduce the amount of water that in some parts of the world is already a scarce resource?
The hydrogen turns back into water when it is burned or run through a fuel cell.
Thank you Rosie and Paul. You've really hit the nail on the head, with all this excellent information. Now let's somehow convince the australian government to implement a carbon tax, a seemingly impossible task.
Thanks for providing such detailed & fact-based content. side note Please consider a Mic upgrade maybe something with auto-levelling. (so much for existing infrastructure hay Boris johnson)
Excellent food for thought
Turquoise hydrogen seems like it would be a promising technology when combined with our existing natural gas pipelines. Natural gas at the outlets of the pipelines can create H2 for local use and last mile transport while the carbon black can be collected and sold to manufacturers as a cleaner carbon source to be used to create more carbon composite based structural components. Developing a cheap way of manufacturing carbon composites on mass would also lower our dependence on plastics.
Interesting ideas!
A great way to make carbon products with non-CO2 emitting hydrogen as a byproduct. But try to reduce even 1/2 of the amount of hydrogen we make today by doing pyrolysis, you would produce TEN TIMES the total mass of carbon black and graphite, combined, that we use in the world each year. This will never be a major source of hydrogen.
does biogas make sense for those pipes? the way I understand it,
dry biomass (e.g. straw) + heat (no oxygen) => solid carbon (soot and charcoal) + a small amount of carbon dioxide + methane
since the carbon captured by plants to make the biomass is being split between making coal and making carbon dioxide and making methane, the whole process is net carbon negative (if you don't burn the coal that comes out of the process).
then just put the methane into the pipeline!
What we are missing is that it is really easy to turn hydrogen into methane if you have a source of CO2.
Eventually it will make sense to keep the old refinery running. Install a CO2 scrubber to get CO2 from the atmosphere and use it to make feedstocks for the chemical industry.
We don't just use oil for burning. We use it to make everything from clothes to roads to buildings.
Yes, I also really hope that carbon capture technology matures and goes mainstream soon. It has proven very challenging over the last 30 odd years we have been working on it, there are still very few working CCS projects around.
I have a couple of videos planned on this topic in the near future.
Problem is the methane and other hydrocarbons we burn to make concentrated CO2 is done in distributed fashion. In deed, hydrocarbons and electricty are the two ways we distribute mass energy to run society. Extracting CO2 is energy and that energy cost soars as the density goes down and the distance to end use goes up intensive and making it pure enough to refine uses even more energy, and ....
Coal fired Power Stations, using the latest closed loop systems can't even make decently pure, uncontaminated CO2, it's only suitable for injection for fracking, etc. which means more carbon into the atmosphere....
The grand conspiracy isn't in the boardrooms, or the curriculum of engineering schools; it's in the structure of nature.
Thanks for the video. I just subscribed and will review all hydrogen videos carefully.
My impression, reinforced by this video, is that hydrogen is a 'later' opportunity, not a 'now' opportunity. Even as a 'later' opportunity it is likely niche as Paul points out.
I agree, with the exception that we should be starting to transition to green hydrogen for ammonia production asap. The technology involved there is definitely "now" but everyone seems so focused on new uses for hydrogen to solve the last, hardest to decarbonise sectors.
@@EngineeringwithRosie So what are the efficiencies of producing ammonia from green hydrogen? For a given country, what is the annual consumption of ammonia and how does that consumption compare the ammonia required to generate a day's worth of electrical energy for that country? What is currently the most efficient means to convert ammonia to electricity? I'm interested in whether storing ammonia for backup electrical energy is an incremental increase in overall ammonia production or a significant increase. A topic for a future video? Discussing how one might estimate the stored energy required to provide good electrical grid reliability might be another good topic.
@@mrhickman53 Go back and listen again. They covered producing ammonia as fertilizer in the video. Not for electrical generation, but to make food. Major C02 emitter at 2%, right behind making concrete. Not sexy, but practicable and doable with today's technology now very rapidly.
@@rcmrcm3370 It still may not be a "now" opportunity if the still scarce renewable energy displaces more carbon per kWh produced in other industries. I am jealous of renewable energy generation till it becomes ubiquitous and fossil fuels are out of the electrical generation and transportation industries. Residential an commercial heating actually offer greater carbon offset. Electrolyzing H2 starts with a 20% energy penalty under ideal conditions before any conversion.
I'm certainly for renewable ammonia in the future, just not the urgent now.
The jetting in UK appliances is suitable for a maximum of a 20%. In addition up to 50% hydrogen in the mix does not cause hydrogen embrittlement or cracking. 52lx grade pipe is susceptible to 100% Hydrogen embrittlement and cracking at line pressure. The lower strength steels are less susceptible to embrittlement, but would need to be greater wall thickness to withstand the pressure and would have to be larger diameter than present as National grid utilises the volume of the pipeline system as a storage vessel. Replacing the system, would be more costly due to the fact that the pipe lengths would have to be shorter, to allow maximum transport at 44 tonnes, entailing, shorter lengths being buried by existing sidebooms. Compressor stations in use presently are turbine sets, unsuitable for Hydrogen and would need to be replaced. Pressure reduction stations are also needing to be replaced. Apparently the low pressure street works are acceptable for hydrogen, though HDPE pipework is prone to leakage and Hydrogen is also a lightweight element and a Green House Gas in itself. The UK government has licensed new gas blocks and has stated that Natural Gas will be in use in the UK untill the end of the century. It is then impossible to comply with COP26 agreements and the UK will be fined £8billion per annum. The building of a second Hydrogen Grid, I believe would be £500 Billion at today's costs, with Green Steel, who knows.
Another disadvantage, rarely discussed, is how poorly hydrogen performs in a combustion engine, with a rather large loss in energy completely overwhelming the decrease in emissions. This is more than impractical. It cannot be overcome with the paradigm we currently use in transport, which represents the largest contributor to the problem.
Super clear !!
in New Zealand, decades ago, we piped Coal Gas into homes (it was hydrogen plus carbon monoxide) . When I was a teen they switched over to Natural Gas. In your youse, only yhe burner orifices were changed.