Publications

Blending hydrogen into the gas grid could be an important stepping stone during the transition to a sustainable net zero system. In particular it may: provide a significant and reliable source of demand for hydrogen producers supporting the investment case for hydrogen; provide learnings and incremental change towards what could potentially become a 100% hydrogen grid; and immediately decarbonise a portion of the gas flowing through the grid. Technical questions relating to hydrogen blending are being taken forward by the industry (e.g. through the HyDeploy project in relation to the maximum potential blend of hydrogen that can be accommodated without end user appliances needing to be altered or replaced). But if blending is to take place changes to commercial arrangements will be necessary as today these assume a relatively uniform gas quality. In particular the commercial framework will need to ensure that limits on the percentage of hydrogen that can safely be blended (currently expected to be around 20% by volume) are not exceeded. We have been commissioned by Cadent to undertake a Network Innovation Allowance (NIA) project to identify the changes required to the gas commercial framework that will enable hydrogen blending in the GB gas grid and to set out a roadmap for how these can be delivered. This report sets out our recommendations.

Water electrolysis for hydrogen production has received increasing attention especially for accumulating renewable energy. Here we comprehensively reviewed all water electrolysis research areas through computational analysis using a citation network to objectively detect emerging technologies and provide interdisciplinary data for forecasting trends. The results show that all research areas increase their publication counts per year and the following two areas are particularly increasing in terms of number of publications: “microbial electrolysis” and “catalysts in an alkaline water electrolyzer (AWE) and in a polymer electrolyte membrane water electrolyzer (PEME).”. Other research areas such as AWE and PEME systems solid oxide electrolysis and the whole renewable energy system have recently received several review papers although papers that focus on specific technologies and are cited frequently have not been published within the citation network. This indicates that these areas receive attention but there are no novel technologies that are the center of the citation network. Emerging technologies detected within these research areas are presented in this review. Furthermore a comparison with fuel cell research is conducted because water electrolysis is the reverse reaction to fuel cells and similar technologies are employed in both areas. Technologies that are not transferred between fuel cells and water electrolysis are introduced and future water electrolysis trends are discussed.

In response to the objective of fully attaining carbon neutrality by 2060 people from all walks of life are pursuing low-carbon transformation. Due to the high water cut in the middle and late phases of development the oilfield’s energy consumption will be quite high and the rise in energy consumption will lead to an increase in carbon emission at the same time. As a result the traditional energy model is incapable of meeting the energy consumption requirement of high water cut oilfields in their middle and later phases of development. The present wind hydrogen coupling energy system was researched and coupled with the classic dispersed oilfield energy system to produce energy for the oilfields in this study. This study compares four future energy system models to existing ones computes the energy cost and net present value of an oilfield in Northwest China and proposes a set of economic evaluation tools for oilfield energy systems. The study’s findings indicate that scenario four provides the most economic and environmental benefits. This scenario effectively addresses the issue of high energy consumption associated with aging oilfields at this point significantly reduces carbon emissions absorbs renewable energy locally and reduces the burden on the power grid system. Finally sensitivity analysis is utilized to determine the effect of wind speed electricity cost and oilfield gas output on the system’s economic performance. The results indicate that the system developed in this study can be applied to other oilfields.

The EAH Team takes a break from standard format on this special episode of Everything About Hydrogen to discuss some of the geopolitical factors and considerations driving the evolution of global hydrogen markets.

The podcast can be found on their website

To achieve the Net-Zero Emissions goal by 2050 a major upscale in green hydrogen needs to be achieved; this will also facilitate use of renewable electricity as a source of decarbonised fuel in hard-to-abate sectors such as industry and transport. Nearly 80% of the world’s offshore wind resource is in waters deeper than 60 m where bottom-fixed wind turbines are not feasible. This creates a significant opportunity to couple the high capacity factor floating offshore wind and green hydrogen. In this paper we consider dedicated large-scale floating offshore wind farms for hydrogen production with three coupling typologies; (i) centralised onshore electrolysis (ii) decentralised offshore electrolysis and (iii) centralised offshore electrolysis. The typology design is based on variables including for: electrolyser technology; floating wind platform; and energy transmission vector (electrical power or offshore hydrogen pipelines). Offshore hydrogen pipelines are assessed as economical for large and distant farms. The decentralised offshore typology employing a semi-submersible platform could accommodate a proton exchange membrane electrolyser on deck; this would negate the need for an additional separate structure or hydrogen export compression and enhance dynamic operational ability. It is flexible; if one electrolyser (or turbine) fails hydrogen production can easily continue on the other turbines. It also facilities flexibility in further expansion as it is very much a modular system. Alternatively less complexity is associated with the centralised offshore typology which may employ the electrolysis facility on a separate offshore platform and be associated with a farm of spar-buoy platforms in significant water depth locations.

On today's show the EAH team will be joined by Brendan Norman to talk about deployment of sustainable FCEV technologies across many different segments of the transport sector and utility vehicles. Brendan is the CEO of H2X a new vehicle manufacturing company based in Sydney with a manufacturing facility in Port Kembla will deliver its first hydrogen FCEVs to market beginning in 2022 before expanding its vehicle offerings in subsequent years. Brendan joined the EAH team via SquadCast from Kuala Lumpur to talk fuel cells with us and you don't want to miss the excellent discussion that we had on this week's episode.

The podcast can be found on their website

Over the past decade energy demand has witnessed a drastic increase mainly due to huge development in the industry sector and growing populations. This has led to the global utilization of renewable energy resources and technologies to meet this high demand as fossil fuels are bound to end and are causing harm to the environment. Solar PV (photovoltaic) systems are a renewable energy technology that allows the utilization of solar energy directly from the sun to meet electricity demands. Solar PV has the potential to create a reliable clean and stable energy systems for the future. This paper discusses the different types and generations of solar PV technologies available as well as several important applications of solar PV systems which are “Large-Scale Solar PV” “Residential Solar PV” “Green Hydrogen” “Water Desalination” and “Transportation”. This paper also provides research on the number of solar papers and their applications that relate to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the years between 2011 and 2021. A total of 126513 papers were analyzed. The results show that 72% of these papers are within SDG 7: Affordable and Clean Energy. This shows that there is a lack of research in solar energy regarding the SDGs especially SDG 1: No Poverty SDG 4: Quality Education SDG 5: Gender Equality SDG 9: Industry Innovation and Infrastructure SDG 10: Reduced Inequality and SDG 16: Peace Justice and Strong Institutions. More research is needed in these fields to create a sustainable world with solar PV technologies.

Hydrogen can be used to enable decarbonisation of challenging applications such as provision of heat and as a fuel for heavy transport. The UK has set out a strategy for developing a new low carbon hydrogen sector by 2030. Underground storage will be a key component of any regional or national hydrogen network because of the variability of both supply and demand across different end-use applications. For storage of pure hydrogen salt caverns currently remain the only commercially proven subsurface storage technology implemented at scale. A new network of hydrogen storage caverns will therefore be required to service a low carbon hydrogen network. To facilitate planning for such systems this study presents a modelling approach used to evaluate the UK's theoretical hydrogen storage capacity in new salt caverns in bedded rock salt. The findings suggest an upper bound potential for hydrogen storage exceeding 64 million tonnes providing 2150 TWh of storage capacity distributed in three discrete salt basins in the UK. The modelled cavern capacity has been interrogated to identify the practical inter-seasonal storage capacity suitable for integration in a hydrogen transmission system. Depending on cavern spacing a peak load deliverability of between 957 and 1876 GW is technically possible with over 70% of the potential found in the East Yorkshire and Humber region. The range of geologic uncertainty affecting the estimates is approximately ±36%. In principle the peak domestic heating demand of approximately 170 GW across the UK can be met using the hydrogen withdrawn from caverns alone albeit in practice the storage potential is unevenly distributed. The analysis indicates that the availability of salt cavern storage potential does not present a limiting constraint for the development of a low-carbon hydrogen network in the UK. The general framework presented in this paper can be applied to other regions to estimate region-specific hydrogen storage potential in salt caverns.

2020 has been a year for the history books! Some good most of it not so good; but 2020 has been a boom year for the future of hydrogen technologies. Patrick Chris and Andrew do their level best on this episode to talk about all the stories and the highlights of 2020 in under 50 minutes. Have a listen and let us know if we missed anything in our penultimate episode of 2020!

The podcast can be found on their website

Though Power-to-X pathways primarily Power-to-Liquids attract interest as solutions for decarbonising parts of the transport sector that are not suitable for electrification the regulatory framework until recently slowed down their implementation. This paper examines the updates in the main aspects of the legal framework in the European Union from 2019 to the beginning of 2022 related to Power-to-X: support schemes specific targets and potential barriers. The results show increasing interest and market entrance of electrolysis and push from the different actors and regulatory parties to establish solutions that will enable faster upscaling. However it is visible from the National Energy and Climate Plans and hydrogen strategies that the most emphasis is still on hydrogen as an end fuel for personal vehicles or power-to-gas. On the other hand few countries have implemented legal frameworks facilitating diverse PtX pathways without focusing solely on hydrogen. Nevertheless revisions of RED II have finally set up specific targets for electrofuels and Fit for 55 has introduced new actions supporting electrofuels in aviation and marine transport.

Direct containment heating (DCH) is one of the potential factors leading to early containment failure. DCH is closely related to safety analysis and containment performance evaluation of nuclear power plants. In this study a DCH prediction program was developed to analyze the DCH loads of containment vessel. The phenomenological model of debris dispersal metal oxidation reaction debris-atmospheric heat transfer and hydrogen jet burn was established. Code assessment was performed by comparing with several separate effect tests and integral effect tests. The comparison between the predicted results and experimental data shows that the program can predict the key parameters such as peak pressure temperature and hydrogen production in containment well and for most comparisons the relative errors can be maintained within 20%. Among them the prediction uncertainty of hydrogen production is slightly larger. The analysis shows that the main sources of the error are the difference of time scale and the oxidation of cavity debris.

Hydrogen constitutes the only carbon-free fuel that can be used for energy conversion producing water as the only by-product. With water being one of the most abundant and inexhaustible raw materials in the world and the required electricity input being provided by renewable resources the produced hydrogen via water electrolysis constitutes a green pathway towards sustainability. In this work a hybrid PV power-to-hydrogen storage and fuel cell system is proposed to satisfy the domestic load of a residential building. Identifying alkaline as a mandatory electrolysis technology the performance of alkaline electrolysis cells is assessed considering the inclusion of a two-switch buck-boost converter. Following a comprehensive formulation with respect to each distinguished system component the balance condition at DC and AC buses is determined. The proposed configuration is evaluated taking into account PV systems of different ratings namely 3 kW 5 kW and 7 kW. Based on actual data relating to both PV generation and domestic load for the year 2020 the obtained results from the annual simulations are compared with feed-in tariff and net-metering schemes. According to the results PV capacity firming is achieved creating great opportunities for autonomy enhancement not only for electricity but also in other energy sectors.

Hydrogen-based energy carriers including hydrogen ammonia and synthetic hydrocarbons are expected to help reduce residual carbon dioxide emissions in the context of the Paris Agreement goals although their potential has not yet been fully clarified in light of their competitiveness and complementarity with other mitigation options such as electricity biofuels and carbon capture and storage (CCS). This study aimed to explore the role of hydrogen in the global energy system under various mitigation scenarios and technology portfolios using a detailed energy system model that considers various energy technologies including the conversion and use of hydrogen-based energy carriers. The results indicate that the share of hydrogen-based energy carriers generally remains less than 5% of global final energy demand by 2050 in the 2 ◦C scenarios. Nevertheless such carriers contribute to removal of residual emissions from the industry and transport sectors under specific conditions. Their share increases to 10–15% under stringent mitigation scenarios corresponding to 1.5 ◦C warming and scenarios without CCS. The transport sector is the largest consumer accounting for half or more of hydrogen production followed by the industry and power sectors. In addition to direct usage of hydrogen and ammonia synthetic hydrocarbons converted from hydrogen and carbon captured from biomass or direct air capture are attractive transport fuels growing to half of all hydrogen-based energy carriers. Upscaling of electrification and biofuels is another common cost-effective strategy revealing the importance of holistic policy design rather than heavy reliance on hydrogen.

The production of green hydrogen from renewable energy by means of water electrolysis is a promising approach to support energy sector decarbonization. This paper presents a techno-economic model of plants with PV sources connected to electrolysis in self-consumption regime that considers the dynamics of electrolysis systems. The model calculates the optimal hourly dispatch of the electrolysis system including the operational states (production standby and idle) the load factor in production and the energy imports and exports to the electricity grid. Results indicate that the model is a useful decision support tool to operate electrolysis plants connected to PV plants in self-consumption regimes with the target of reducing hydrogen production costs.

When the pandemic recedes lockdowns and restrictions are relaxed and eventually eliminated and millions of residents in cities across the world begin to return to their offices and workplaces public transit systems will once again be at the core of billions of commuters' daily activities. Urban transit systems are designed to move huge volumes of people through cities and communities quickly reliably and cost-efficiently (some systems accomplish these goals better than others!). The energy needed to run these networks of cars trains and buses is enormous and today most of it comes from fossil fuels. How can communities - both large and small - redesign their transit systems to eliminate operational carbon emissions in the future?

The podcast can be found on their website

The Poza de la Sal diapir is a closed circular depression with Cretaceous Mesozoic materials formed by gypsum Keuper clays and a large extension of salt in the center with intercalations of ophite. The low seismic activity of the area the reduced permeability and porosity of the salt caverns and the proximity to the Páramo de Poza wind park make it a suitable place for the construction of a facility for underground storage of green hydrogen obtained from surplus wind power. The design of a cavern for hydrogen storage at a depth of 1000 m takes into account the differences in stresses temperatures and confining pressures involved in the salt deformation process. During the 8 months of the injection phase 23.0 GWh can be stored in the form of hydrogen obtained from the wind energy surplus to be used later in the extraction phase. The injection and extraction ratio must be developed under the conditions of geomechanical safety of the cavity so as to minimize the risks to the environment and people by conditioning the gas pressure inside the cavity to remain within a given range.

Clean fuel is advocated to be used for sustainability. The number of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and hydrogen vehicles is increasing globally. Explosion hazard is a threat. On the other hand the use of hydrogen is under consideration in Hong Kong. Explosion hazards of these clean fuel (LPG and hydrogen) vehicles were studied and are compared in this paper. The computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software Flame Acceleration Simulator (FLACS) was used. A car garage with a rolling shutter as its entrance was selected for study. Dispersion of LPG from the leakage source with ignition at a higher position was studied. The same garage was used with a typical hydrogen vehicle leaking 3.4 pounds (1.5 kg) of hydrogen in 100 s the mass flow rate being equal to 0.015 kgs−1 . The hydrogen vehicle used in the simulation has two hydrogen tanks with a combined capacity of 5 kg. The entire tank would be completely vented out in about 333 s. Two scenarios of CFD simulation were carried out. In the first scenario the rolling shutter was completely closed and the leaked LPG or hydrogen was ignited at 300 s after leakage. The second scenario was conducted with a gap height of 0.3 m under the rolling shutter. Predicted results of explosion pressure and temperature show that appropriate active fire engineering systems are required when servicing these clean fuel vehicles in garages. An appropriate vent in an enclosed space such as the garage is important in reducing explosion hazards.

The main goal of THyGA’s WP5 is to investigate ways to adapt residential or commercial appliances that have safety or performance issues to different levels of H2 concentrations in natural gas. This first deliverable presents some possible mitigation measures based on a literature study and some calculations.<br/>Acting on gas quality to avoid that hydrogen addition enhance current gas properties variations was explored several times in the past. Designing new appliances that could operate with variable gas composition including hydrogen. Dealing with existing appliances in order to guaranty safety for users and appliances.

Since the 1970s hydrogen has been considered as a possible energy carrier for the storage of renewable energy. The main focus has been on addressing the ultimate challenge: developing an environmentally friendly successor for gasoline. This very ambitious goal has not yet been fully reached as discussed in this review but a range of new lightweight hydrogen-containing materials has been discovered with fascinating properties. State-of-the-art and future perspectives for hydrogen-containing solids will be discussed with a focus on metal borohydrides which reveal significant structural flexibility and may have a range of new interesting properties combined with very high hydrogen densities.

The application of appropriate procedures in the downstream gas industry (defined as any works downstream of the emergency control value) is critical in protecting consumers of gas both domestic and commercial. The two primary standard setting bodies for the downstream gas industry are the British Standard Institution (BSI) and the Institution of Gas Engineers and Managers (IGEM). To ensure only competent engineers carry out works on a gas installation all gas businesses or selfemployed persons must become a member of Gas Safe Register as stipulated by the Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998 1 and each gas operative shall be included on the register and hold a valid license card that covers the areas of gas work they undertake. Membership of the Gas Safe Register is contingent upon demonstration of competency the recognised competency assessments are based on the relevant BSI and IGEM standards. Therefore the primary source of a gas operative’s competency to work on natural gas installations are the associated BSI and IGEM natural gas downstream standards.<br/>Investigation was undertaken to understand the potential implications of introducing 20 mol% hydrogen (H2) within natural gas supplies on the ability of gas operatives to competently carry out works. This investigation took the form of identifying all BSI and IGEM standards that could be applied on natural gas installations and reviewing them within the context of the known effects of introducing a 20 mol% H2 blend. Following review a series of technical questions were generated and responded to by the Health and Safety Executive Science Division. The responses provided were then reviewed and if considered necessary challenged to provide further information. The procedural review was led by Blue Flame Associates a body deemed sufficiently competent in downstream standards training certification and investigation. The report was subsequently reviewed by industry and feedback received. The industry comments were reviewed by the Project Team and where considered necessary the report was updated.

Decentralised renewable energy production in the form of fuels or electricity can have large scale deployment in future energy systems but the feasibility needs to be assessed. The novelty of this paper is in the design and implementation of a mixed integer linear programming optimisation model to minimise the net present cost of decentralised hydrogen production for different energy demands on neighbourhood urban scale while simultaneously adhering to European Union targets on greenhouse gas emission reductions. The energy system configurations optimised were assumed to possibly consist of a variable number or size of wind turbines solar photovoltaics grey grid electricity usage battery storage electrolyser and hydrogen storage. The demands served are hydrogen for heating and mobility and electricity for the households. A hydrogen residential heating project currently being developed in Hoogeveen The Netherlands served as a case study. Six scenarios were compared each taking one or multiple energy demand services into question. For each scenario the levelised cost of hydrogen was calculated. The lowest levelised cost of hydrogen was found for the combined heating and mobility scenario: 8.36 € kg− 1 for heating and 9.83 € kg− 1 for mobility. The results support potential cost reductions of combined demand patterns of different energy services. A sensitivity analysis showed a strong influence of electrolyser efficiency wind turbine parameters and emission reduction factor on levelised cost. Wind energy was strongly preferred because of the lower cost and the low greenhouse gas emissions compared to solar photovoltaics and grid electricity. Increasing electrolyser efficiency and greenhouse gas emission reduction of the used technologies deserve further research.

The main objective of this paper is to select the optimal configuration of a ship’s power system considering the use of fuel cells and batteries that would achieve the lowest CO2 emissions also taking into consideration the number of battery cycles. The ship analyzed in this work is a Platform Supply Vessel (PSV) used to support oil and gas offshore platforms transporting goods equipment and personnel. The proposed scheme considers the ship’s retrofitting. The ship’s original main generators are maintained and the fuel cell and batteries are installed as complementary sources. Moreover a sensitivity analysis is pursued on the ship’s demand curve. The simulations used to calculate the CO2 emissions for each of the new hybrid configurations were developed using HOMER software. The proposed solutions are auxiliary generators three types of batteries and a protonexchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) with different sizes of hydrogen tanks. The PEMFC and batteries were sized as containerized solutions and the sizing of the auxiliary engines was based on previous works. Each configuration consists of a combination of these solutions. The selection of the best configuration is one contribution of this paper. The new configurations are classified according to the reduction of CO2 emitted in comparison to the original system. For different demand levels the results indicate that the configuration classification may vary. Another valuable contribution of this work is the sizing of the battery and hydrogen storage systems. They were installed in 20 ft containers since the installation of batteries fuel cells and hydrogen tanks in containers is widely used for ship retrofit. As a result the most significant reduction of CO2 emissions is 10.69%. This is achieved when the configuration includes main generators auxiliary generators a 3119 kW lithium nickel manganese cobalt (LNMC) battery a 250 kW PEMFC and 581 kg of stored hydrogen.

The HyDeploy project has undertaken a programme of work to assess the effect of hydrogen addition on the safety and performance of gas appliances and installations. A representative set of eight appliances have been assessed in laboratory experiments with a range of test gases that explored high and low Wobbe Index and hydrogen concentrations up to 28.4 % mol/mol. These tests have demonstrated that the addition of hydrogen does not affect the key hazard areas of CO production light back flame out or the operation of flame failure devices. It was identified that for some designs of gas fire appliances the operation of the oxygen depletion sensors may be affected by the addition of hydrogen. Testing of the gas fires that are present at Keele University that use oxygen depletion sensors have been shown to operate satisfactorily.<br/>A comprehensive onsite survey programme at Keele University has assessed 95% of the installations (126 of 133) that will receive the hydrogen blended gas during the HyDeploy trial. Where access to properties was not possible then the information obtained revealed that the appliances were annually checked either through British Gas service contracts or as a result of being rental properties. The onsite testing programme assessed installations for gas tightness and appliance combustion safety and operation with normal line gas G20 reference gas and two hydrogen blended gases. The checks identified a small number instances were remedial work was required to correct poor condition or operation. Only one case was found to be immediately dangerous which was capped off until repair work was undertaken. CO and smoke alarms were fitted in approximately half of properties and alarms were provided as required to the occupants. Gas tightness tests identified leaks in three installations. Where installations are gas tight then analysis has shown that no additional leaks would occur with hydrogen blended gas. There were no issues identified with the combustion performance of those appliances that were operating correctly and results were in line with those obtained in the laboratory testing programme.<br/>The findings of the Appliance and Installation testing program have been used to define the input values into the HyDeploy quantified risk assessment (QRA) where Keele University specific operation is different to GB as a whole or where the findings show the addition of hydrogen will change the risk profile.<br/>Click on supplements to see the other documents from this report

Decarbonization plays an important role in future energy systems for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and establishing a zero-carbon society. Hydrogen is believed to be a promising secondary energy source (energy carrier) that can be converted stored and utilized efficiently leading to a broad range of possibilities for future applications. Moreover hydrogen and electricity are mutually converted creating high energy security and broad economic opportunities toward high energy resilience. Hydrogen can be stored in various forms including compressed gas liquid hydrogen hydrides adsorbed hydrogen and reformed fuels. Among these liquid hydrogen has advantages including high gravimetric and volumetric hydrogen densities and hydrogen purity. However liquid hydrogen is garnering increasing attention owing to the demand for long storage periods long transportation distances and economic performance. This paper reviews the characteristics of liquid hydrogen liquefaction technology storage and transportation methods and safety standards to handle liquid hydrogen. The main challenges in utilizing liquid hydrogen are its extremely low temperature and ortho- to para-hydrogen conversion. These two characteristics have led to the urgent development of hydrogen liquefaction storage and transportation. In addition safety standards for handling liquid hydrogen must be updated regularly especially to facilitate massive and large-scale hydrogen liquefaction storage and transportation.

The results of studies of the influence of hydrogen and hydrogen-containing gas additives on the parameters of various types of internal combustion engines are analyzed and summarized. It made possible to identify the features of the effect on the combustion of fuel during internal combustion engine operation at partial loads. The dependences of reducing the toxicity and fuel consumption of internal combustion engine on the amount of addition of hydrogen and a hydrogen-containing gas to the air-fuel mixture were obtained. It allowed to establish quantitative effects of free hydrogen in particular to quantify the region of small hydrogen additives and the conditions under which hydrogen exhibits the qualities of a chemically active component of the mixture.