Impact of hydrogen blended natural gas on linepack energy for existing high pressure pipelines

Abstract

The aim of this work is to examine the impact of the hydrogen blended natural gas on the linepack energy under emergency scenarios of the pipeline operation. Production of hydrogen from renewable energy sources through electrolysis and subsequently injecting it into the natural gas network, gives flexibility in power grid regulation and the energy storage. In this context, knowledge about the hydrogen percentage content, which can safely effect on materials in a long time steel pipeline service during transport of the hydrogen-natural gas mixture, is essential for operators of a transmission network. This paper first reviews the allowable content of hydrogen that can be blended with natural gas in existing pipeline systems, and then investigates the impact on linepack energy with both startup and shutdown of the compressors scenarios. In the latter case, an unsteady gas flow model is used. To avoid spurious oscillations in the solution domain, a flux limiter is applied for the numerical approximation. The GERG-2008 equation of state is used to calculate the physical properties. For the case study, a tree-topological high pressure gas network, which have been in-service for many years, is selected. The outcomes are valuable for pipeline operators to assess the security of supply.