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Comment by Loic | Hacker News Reader

We are in the process of using current gas pipelines for pure hydrogen in Germany.

It is also possible to mix a percentage of hydrogen in the normal feed of gas burners.

For the moment only at the industrial scale. Home devices are not yet adapted. Industry is quick to adapt especially because of the incentives.

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fwiw we bought a boiler, designed in 2015 and it says it can burn gas up to 20% hydrogen.

Here in NL the electricity prices are negative ~5% of the time this year so a lot of opportunity for making some cheap hydrogen

Are we? Do you have a source for that? Unless it has already been built with hydrogen in mind we'd need completely new infrastructure, pipepines, storage and turbines in power plants.

We aren't. It's all a pipe dream. We want to, but Hydrogen is much harder to contain than Methane. If anything we are closer to dismantling the gas pipelines then to use them for Hydrogen.

All the attached "Appliances" must be converted from using Methan to Hydrogen, too. Not gonna happen.

I suspect the plans in Germany are to import Hydrogen as Ammonia from overseas in addition to directly creating and locally storing hydrogen from wind and solar power .. all to feed local generators to baseload the German powergrid.

https://www.wasserstoff-niedersachsen.de/en/wilhelmshaven-gr...

https://www.ewe.com/en/media-center/press-releases/2022/11/t...

https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/fortes...

I can tell you that the industry, that is, the biggest are setting up the infrastructure at the moment to have H2 transit between the "North" and the Ruhr region. So, yes, we do it now.

Source: I work in oil & gas.

Curious to hear more about this, do you mind if I email you?

Sure!

Yes, the industry first, because it is easy during a turnaround (refineries are stopped for maintenance every 5 years) to adapt the burners etc. to run on a different mix.

What the FDP is doing/promoting with the stupid run your gas burner at home on H2 in 10 years and get money now is something totally different and from my personal point of view as someone working in oil & gas completely stupid. We should not use gas (be it H2, CH4, whatever) for heat. And I say that knowing that it is bad for my salary. But I have kids and they need a future...

https://www.dvgw.de/english-pages/dvgw/news/germanys-gas-pip...: “The steel pipelines installed in the German gas grid are suitable for transporting hydrogen. They were found to possess no differences in terms of their basic suitability for transporting hydrogen compared to natural gas. Both operational ageing and the required fracture toughness and strength meet the expectations for safe availability spanning decades.”

I guess the last mile is a more difficult problem, but the OP didn’t claim that was solved, saying: “For the moment only at the industrial scale. Home devices are not yet adapted.”

Good to hear that the pipelines can be reused. For home appliances we really should move away from using natural gas and not try to substitute it with hydrogen instead, heat pumps and district heating are better solutions.

Ireland's gas infrastructure and domestic appliances can handle up to between 50% to 80% hydrogen admix. I'm hopeful we go this way soon with a wind energy surplus.

Doesn't this increase the risk of gas explosions in houses? (Hydrogen has a wider flammability range than methane, particularly it is flammable in higher concentrations, =presumably bigger bang) Seems a bit dicey.

The latest quantitative risk assessment of hydrogen in a domestic context is that slightly greater explosion risk is outweighed by the slightly lower fire risk. Hydrogen has a wider explosion range... but most natural gas explosions are from small leaks accumulating basements or low spaces in houses which hydrogen won't do. It could instead accumulate under the roof but roofs are almost never sufficiently gas-tight to hydrogen to allow for substantial accumulation.

Also, many leaks are in the mains or services under the road. Natural gas will flow along the outside of the pipe and through the soil and end up in the basements of nearby buildings. Again, hydrogen would not do this, it would diffuse up through the soil and disperse in the atmosphere.

The big change is to boiler enclosures. These are currently designed to limit voids sufficiently to prevent natural gas explosions which require a minimum cell size of a meter or so to explode (regardless of concentration) rather than deflagrate. That same size for hydrogen is about 5cm so that is the largest acceptable void within the boiler enclosure which requires re-engineering of the way parts fit together and the use of non-h2 permeable foams and plastic spacers to avoid unacceptable voids.

That doesn't sound correct... My understanding was that only quite recent appliances allow a mix of greater than about 30%, and networks can't be operated with a high mix without big upgrades (for 100% hydrogen I believe you need all the compressors to be about three times bigger than a natural gas network, so even getting over 50% H2 with the existing infrastructure doesn't sound right).

All in all I'm convinced it's just not worth doing for residential when you look at the challenges and the terrible efficiency. Since the majority of appliances aren't 'hydrogen ready', it's better to just electrify.

I tried looking for my primary source on this, it was an interview with someone involved with the gas infrastructure here. They mentioned specifically that it was newer than in the UK (and I assume some other EU countries) and that's why it could handle the higher admix. They also have good numbers on the appliances that are in use, there's been grants for a large scale upgrade, all the boilers that have been installed under these programs are rated to 80% H2.

I've no doubt you're right there would have to be significant upgrades done somewhere, but it might not be as big an issue for Ireland and I suppose it depends on how cheap that green hydrogen is for us, but we have to get there first. We'll use it for something.

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