Re: A hydrogen economy id old hat
Hydrogen was in there, but town gas was a complicated mix of Carbon Monoxide, Methane, Ethylene, heavier hydrocarbons and maybe some nitrogen & CO2.
Boilers and appliances had to have their burners changed to accept the new natural gas mix, or be replaced entirely.
The DTI commissioned a study in the early 2000's of what would be involved in converting boilers to match the proposed EASEE gas specification, an attempt to unify European gas standards (of which there are at least 6 major groups at the time).
This was swiftly ruled out because the cost of changing the appliance base out. Risks to equipment going unchanged; and especially, the lack of enough skilled gas technicians to perform all of the conversions in a short space of time were prohibitive. Training lots of people up for 12 months work and then sacking them off again is not a winner. The EASEE spec leads to more carbon monoxide output; which is bad for various reasons - Germany has significantly more CO poisoning deaths per head than the UK with it's cleaner-burning spec does.
Burning hydrogen will raise the heat output of your combustion reaction, making it more prone to NOX formation (due to the high temperature). The waste product of hydrogen + oxygen is fine - water - but the high temp applied to other gases in the natural gas mix is bad. NOX is a worse greenhouse gas than CO2 per kg.
Hydrogen has all of the above problems of changing the gas specifications, plus additional complications. It has the ability to leak through absolutely anything (not just at joints). There are trace quantities of sulphur throughout the network already; as it is a major constituent of Natural Gas. Most industrial sulphur production is a by product of stripping it out of natural gas before letting it into the distribution network. But they never quite remove all of it.
Hydrogen plus sulphur is a very easy way to put a ruinously corrosive acid inside your pipelines and appliances.
A/C because, very clearly I have worked in this industry for quite some time, and the list of companies that do gas transmission in the UK is very limited. But I'm just an engineer versus the weight of a marketing agency, so what do I know.
I don't think it's an accident that the transmission business unit is up for sale, if you want to know what people really think about its future.
The whole hydrogen-into-distribution networks shebang is a disaster and a half waiting to happen. Hydrogen would be far better served by production at the coast from excess wind output; and decantered for use in applications that require the high density / low mass energy (e.g. aircraft), and can have appropriate safety measures put in place around their use & transport.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
