HYDROGEN TRANSMISSION FOR FUTURE ENERGY SYSTEMS

J. D. POTTIER
Gaz de France
Etudes et Technique Nouvelles
La Plaine-Saint-Denis
France

ABSTRACT. In future, hydrogen-based energy systems, hydrogen will be moved

mainly in gas form, in pipelines under high pressure, based on the tcchniques currently
employed for natural gas. Some technical adaptations will be required concerning the
steels used, the pipeline auxiliary equipment and the compression stations. The energy
transportation cost is estimated to be 1.5 to 2 times greater for hydrogen than for naturdl
gas, which makes it quite acceptable in the long run. This paper also describes the
transportation of merchant hydrogen (gas or liquid) in moderate quantities. The sea
transport of liquid hydrogen, which is very costly, might be used in special systems in
the very long term.

1. Introduction

With the view of developing hydrogen as an energy carrier in the future, the main
transportation mode that suggests itself is obviously transmission of hydrogen in gas
form, in pipes, under pressure (1).

Presently, this transmission mode is implemented either for links between nearby
production and utilization sites (a few kilometers or tens of kilometers apart), or in more
extensive networks (roughly 200 km). Future developments will certainly entail greater
now rates and distances.

There are also other types of transportation used for specific cases:
-transportation of compressed or liquid hydrogen in trucks,
-transportation of liquid hydrogen associated especially with space vehicle launching
sites.

Also worth mentioning is the transportation of liquid hydrogen by sea. These more
specific applications will be examined in the second part of this paper. As stated,
hydrogen piping is already done on routine basis. Table 1 lists the principal hydrogen
pipelines around the world (2, 3). The most highly developed are the networks
constructed in the Ruhr in Germany, in northern France and in Belgium. The Ruhr
hydrogen transmission network (4) built in 1938 links 17 companies, four
of which produce hydrogen by cryogenic separation after electric arc plasma reforming of
181
Y. Yurum (ed.i. Hydrogen Energy System. 181-193.
1995 Kluwer Academic Publishers.
182

natural gas, by recovery from electrolyzed sodium chloride and by PSA separation of
gases obtained by various dehydrogenation processes. This branched network, totalling
approximately 220 km in length, is made up of pipes 100 to 300 mm in diameter
operated at 25 bar from a central control room. The network, managed since the
beginning by the Huls company, was recently taken over by BOC Gase GMBH. Its
capacity is about 1000 million cubic meters of pure hydrogen per annum. As this
network is installed in a heavily built-up area and in mineland, the pipelines are equipped
with special safety systems such as valves tripped in response to rapid pressure drop.

The L'Air Liquide company, also, has installed in the North and East of France and in
Belgium several pipelines, mainly of 100 mm diameter, working at a pressure of 100 bar
and about 340 km in overall length (4). The quantity of high purity (99.995%)
hydrogen that can be moved through this system is 175 million m3 annually.

The transmission of very pure hydrogen as described in the two above examples,
involving flow rates of a few thousand m3/h, is based on conventional techniques but it
requires special precautions to guarantee that users will receive a product stable in quality
and quantity throughout the year. This can be done on the one hand by using equipment
with outstanding fluid tightness and built with ~pecial steels and on the other hand by
implementing exact and carefully controlled operating procedures.

2. Properties of Hydrogen
The important properties affecting the flow of hydrogen and for pipeline and
compression station engineering are its composition, density, specific volume, specific
heat, conductivity, viscosity, enthalpy and entropy, its Joule-Thomson coefficient and
the velocity of sound in the gas. These properties are a function of pressure and
temperature; the pressure and temperature ranges concerned in hydrogen transmission
are 1 to 100 atmospheres (10 2 to lQ4 kPa) and -40 to +50C. For any given
composition, it is necessary to know the relevant equation of state. Several formulations
of this equation and for predicting various properties of hydrogen, in particular the
viscosity of hydrogen gas, have been proposed. Those of McCarty (1979) and
Mortveev (1984) are worthy of mention.

To compute gas flow, the general formula is given below. Other presentations have
been given in the literature.

The pressure drop for gas flowing in a horizontal pipe can be expressed by the
following equation:

where PI and P2 are the upstream and downstream pressures respectively,

s is the density of the gas,
Tm is the mean absolute temperature of the gas in the pipe,
Zm is the compressibility factor of the gas under the average
temperature and pressure conditions of the flow,
L is the length of the pipeline section,
D is the inside diameter of the pipe,