UKH

I’ve often wondered how hydrogen could be safely used within our current hydrocarbon infrastructure, looks like we’ll start to find out next year how viable it is. 

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/23/peak-power-hydrogen-inj...

In reply to SFM:

Hasn't a report just been published saying it's actually not really viable?

In reply to SFM:

Unlikely to be viable for domestic supply but large users could run on a mix of methane and hydrogen if the hydrogen was injected locally and could not get into the general supply. Hydrogen screws up the Wobbe number, which indicates the burnability of gas mixtures, and domestic appliances are designed for  limited range. There are power stations that already burn natural gas which is not up to domestic specs, adding hydrogen would help in these cases - just need to change the burners to suit the changed Wobbe number.

In reply to SFM:

Stir frys will be fun. 

In reply to SFM:

It's technologically viable, sure.

But it's not economically viable. It's just a PR stunt to justify keeping a gas plant online longer.

If HiiROC are making hydrogen from biomethane, as it says in the article, then they are taking the fuel the gas plant ordinarily runs on, and putting it through an expensive and energy-intensive process, just to add it into the gas plant anyway. There is no scenario where that can be cheaper than just running 'natural gas'. If the motivation was truly to decarbonise, they would be better off decommissioning and building a significantly cheaper wind and storage facility on the premises.

Stories like this frustrate me - especially when covered by fairly sensible papers. It lends validity to the lie that we can keep going as we are, that fossil fuel companies care about anything more than continuing to extract gas, that hydrogen is 'just around the corner' if we could just hold onto those gas plants a bit longer...

In reply to SFM:

Use surplus wind power to electrolyse water (offshore?), inject hydrogen underground into exhausted methane gas fields for storage, generate electricity when required.

Hence reducing methane use for electricity generation, but is this plant not more a good demo of solving the issue of energy storage for erratic renewable supplies?

Underground gas fields supplied us for decades so should have capacity of days or weeks until the wind blows again or cold snap ends.

In reply to Toerag:

Not seen that one. Is it tilted to industrial or domestic use? I’ve seen a free things around green hydrogen production but not use.

In reply to George Killaspy:

So when I tried to find more information about this story, Google just throws up research/results from current energy firms. I did find one article by the WE forum but again that is more about grey/blue/green production  

In reply to petemeads:

So in theory if we use hydrogen as a storage energy source from excess renewably generated power it has to be used in conjunction with existing fuels to then generate electricity. Fully converting to sole use wouldn’t work?

In reply to SFM: we had that when I was young, towns gas was a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide. FWIW hydrogen is a grossly inefficient route to converting transporting and using energy from renewable electricity generation

In reply to SFM:

There's no insurmountable technical reason H2 can't be burned or fed to fuel cells but's not a direct replacement for natural gas in machines built for that. Whether it's the best bulk chemical energy storage option, I'm not sure we know yet. It's probably the one getting most attention currently but it's a pain in the ass as a material and I think we probably still need synthetic light fuel oil for aviation. Something spun off from that work may eventually end up a contender.

jk

In reply to SFM:

No, it's basically just another inflammable material. There are fuel cells, gas turbines and of course just burn it to power steam turbines. Even just fling it into a relatively conventional i.c engine.

Currently no major country has the resources or capability to change the entire energy system to a new one so the transformation has to be staggered and co-firing is a progression towards this.