S&P Global Platts: UK’s National Grid to trial new technology separating hydrogen from natural gas
This article was written by James Burgess and originally published in S&P Global Platts on 26th January 2022. You can read the version published on their website here.
Trial production of 7 kg/day of hydrogen
Scope for scaling up with modular system
High-value graphene could make cheap hydrogen
UK gas and power infrastructure company National Grid is to trial a new hydrogen production technology that strips carbon out of natural gas, system developer Levidian said Jan. 26.
The National Grid trial will process 1.5 cu m of natural gas per hour, producing 7 kg/day of hydrogen, with hydrogen making up 70% of the exhaust gas, Levidian told S&P Global Platts.
The trial will start in the first half of 2022, scaling up to additional sites by the end of the year.
"Producing hydrogen alongside graphene allows a very low hydrogen price point to be achieved because it is not the only valuable product produced," a company spokesperson told S&P Global Platts.
The price depended on the input costs of methane and electricity and the sales price of the high-quality graphene produced in the process, Levidian said.
"When the graphene is utilized and the methane comes from waste gas sources, the hydrogen is produced at minimal or sometimes zero cost," it said.
Platts assessed the cost of producing hydrogen by autothermal reforming with carbon capture and storage in the UK at GBP4.92/kg ($6.64kg) on Jan. 25, including capex and carbon.
Hydrogen blending
The process uses plasma technology to separate methane into carbon, in the form of graphene, and hydrogen.
The system then feeds hydrogen into the natural gas network, either as a blend with methane or as 100% hydrogen.
"The hydrogen-methane mix can be delivered in any proportion, including pure hydrogen, to match the capabilities of the network or combustion equipment it is supplying," the company said.
The company is primarily a graphene producer, and is tapping into growing demand for renewable hydrogen, a by-product of the process.
The Levidian LOOP connects to existing natural gas infrastructure, taking a methane feed which it is then fired with microwaves to produce a plasma, separating the hydrogen and the carbon.
In the case of National Grid, the graphene could be used as corrosion-resistant internal coating for gas pipelines, making them suitable for transporting hydrogen.
"Graphene could be a key component in allowing us to repurpose our transmission assets, minimizing disruption to consumers and reducing the overall costs of converting our transmission network to hydrogen as work towards net zero," National Grid Hydrogen Director Antony Green said in a statement.
Levidian CEO John Hartley told Platts there was no limit to the scalability of the modular system.
"I think the limit would really be set by how much hydrogen the end user could take," Hartley said in an interview. "So as that capacity goes up, the potential increases at the same time."
Hartley said the technology also had applications for end-users with large heating demand, such as industrial manufacturers, and in companies with anaerobic digestion operations or that treat water or waste gases.
Grid readiness
The Energy Networks Association said Jan. 13 that Britain's gas grid will be ready to blend up to 20% hydrogen into gas networks across the country from 2023.
The announcement comes after a successful trial that saw a blend of 20% hydrogen introduced into the natural gas supply in the UK in 2021.
HyDeploy, the first project in the UK to blend hydrogen into a gas network, saw 100 homes and 30 university buildings on a private gas network at Keele University receive the blended gas for a period of 18 months ending in spring 2021.
Blending up to 20% hydrogen into the gas grid is subject to a final decision by the UK government in 2023.
A 20% hydrogen blend in the gas grid would save around 6 million mt/year of CO2, ENA said.
The CO2 savings amount to a reduction of around 6%-7%, as hydrogen has around a third of the calorific value of natural gas by volume.
Beyond the 20% level, domestic boilers need to be changed to run on higher mixes of hydrogen, which is the main constraint to hydrogen blending at present, National Grid's Green, told Platts in an interview in 2021.
National Grid is also running a test facility in 2022 to trial blends of up to 100% hydrogen at transmission pressures.
UK domestic consumption accounted for almost 300,000 GWh of gas demand in 2020, up 1.5% on the year, according to government data. Provisional data for the first three quarters of 2021 showed domestic consumption totaling 217,000 GWh, compared with 195,000 GWh in Q1-Q3 2020.