Hydrogen in Pipelines: Impact of Hydrogen Transport in Natural Gas Pipelines

Author(s):  
Rainer Kurz ◽  
Matt Lubomirsky ◽  
Francis Bainier

Abstract The increased use of renewable energy has made the need to store electricity a central requirement. One of the concepts to address this need is to produce hydrogen from surplus electricity, and to use the existing natural gas pipeline system to transport the hydrogen. Generally, the hydrogen content in the pipeline flow would be below 20%, thus avoiding the problems of transporting and burning pure hydrogen. The natural gas – hydrogen mixtures have to be considered both from a gas transport and a gas storage perspective. In this study, the impact of various levels of hydrogen in a pipeline system are simulated. The pipeline hydraulic simulation will provide the necessary operating conditions for the gas compressors, and the gas turbines that drive these compressors. The result of the study addresses the impact on transportation efficiency in terms of energy consumption and the emission of green house gases. Further, necessary concepts in the capability to store gas to better balance supply and demand are discussed.

Author(s):  
Amin Akbari ◽  
Vincent McDonell ◽  
Scott Samuelsen

Co firing of natural gas with renewable fuels such as hydrogen can reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and meet other sustainability considerations. At the same time, adding hydrogen to natural gas alters combustion properties, such as burning speeds, heating values, flammability limits, and chemical characteristics. It is important to identify how combustion stability relates to fuel mixture composition in industrial gas turbines and burners and correlate such behavior to fuel properties or operating conditions. Ultimately, it is desired to predict and prevent operability issues when designing a fuel flexible gas turbine combustor. Fuel interchangeability is used to describe the ability of a substitute fuel composition to replace a baseline fuel without significantly altering performance and operation. Any substitute fuel, while maintaining the same heating load as the baseline fuel, must also provide stable combustion with low pollutant emissions. Interchangeability indices try to predict the impact of fuel composition on lean blowoff and flashback. Correlations for operability limits have been reported, though results are more consistent for blowoff compared to flashback. Yet, even for blowoff, some disagreement regarding fuel composition effects are evident. In the present work, promising correlations and parameters for lean blow off and flashback in a swirl stabilized lean premixed combustor are evaluated. Measurements are conducted for fuel compositions ranging from pure natural gas to pure hydrogen under different levels of preheat and air flow rates. The results are used to evaluate the ability of existing approaches to predict blowoff and flashback. The results show that, while a Damköhler number approach for blowoff is promising, important considerations are required in applying the method. For flashback, the quench constant parameter suggested for combustion induced vortex breakdown was applied and found to have limited success for predicting flashback in the present configuration.


Author(s):  
S. M. Suleiman ◽  
Y. G. Li

Natural gas pipeline plays an important role in transporting natural gas over a long distance. Its performance and operating behavior are affected by many factors, such as ambient conditions, natural gas flow rate, operation and control of compressor pumping stations, etc. Better understanding of the performance and behavior of an integrated pipeline-compressor system used for gas transmission will be beneficial to both design and operation of natural gas pipelines. This paper introduces a novel steady-state thermodynamic performance simulation approach for natural gas pipelines based on fundamental thermodynamics with the inclusion of the coupling between a pipeline and compressor pumping stations. A pipeline resistance model, a compressor performance model characterized by an empirical compressor map and a pipeline control schedule for the operation of an integrated pipeline-compressor system are included in the simulation approach. The novel approach presented in this paper allows the analysis of the thermodynamic coupling between compressors and pipes and the off-design performance analysis of the integrated pipeline-compressor system. The introduced simulation approach has been applied to the performance simulation of a typical model pipeline driven by multiple centrifugal compressor pumping stations. It is assumed in the pipeline control schedule that the total pressure at the inlet of compressor stations is kept constant when pipeline operating condition changes. Such pipeline operating conditions include varying ambient temperature and varying natural gas volumetric flow rate. The performance behavior of the pipeline corresponding to the change of operating conditions has been successfully simulated. The introduced pipeline performance simulation approach is generic and can be applied to different pipeline-compressor systems.


Author(s):  
Xiaocui Tian ◽  
Xiaokai Xing ◽  
Rui Chen ◽  
Shubao Pang ◽  
Liu Yang

In the custody transfer metering of natural gas, it’s necessary to transform gas volume from metering state into standard state. Natural gas is non-ideal gas, and its compressibility factor varies with different components, temperature and pressure. So the accuracy of its calculation has direct impact on that of natural gas metering, and then affects the economic benefits of the enterprise [1]. According to related standard of China, in the custody transfer metering of natural gas, the formula stipulated by AGA NO.8 should be adopted to calculate compressibility factor. But the components of natural gas must be monitored at all times when this method is used, and the calculation process is complicated. In practical operation of natural gas trade, compressibility factor changes because of frequent adjustment of pipeline operating conditions. In order to simplify the calculation, simplified formula is applied to calculate compressibility factor generally, but it’s difficult to guarantee the accuracy at the same time. In this paper, the simplified formula, which is used for calculating natural gas compressibility factor of a joint-stock natural gas pipeline of CNPC, is modified with the standard formula stipulated by AGA NO.8. After the modification, an empirical formula of compressibility factor calculation applicable to this pipeline system is proposed, whereby the accuracy of compressibility factor calculation is improved. When the modified one is applied to natural gas trade, the accuracy of metering is improved likewise.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simonas Cerniauskas ◽  
Antonio Jose Chavez Junco ◽  
Thomas Grube ◽  
Martin Robinius ◽  
Detlef Stolten

The uncertain role of the natural gas infrastructure in the decarbonized energy system and the limitations of hydrogen blending raise the question of whether natural gas pipelines can be economically utilized for the transport of hydrogen. To investigate this question, this study derives cost functions for the selected pipeline reassignment methods. By applying geospatial hydrogen supply chain modeling, the technical and economic potential of natural gas pipeline reassignment during a hydrogen market introduction is assessed.The results of this study show a technically viable potential of more than 80% of the analyzed representative German pipeline network. By comparing the derived pipeline cost functions it could be derived that pipeline reassignment can reduce the hydrogen transmission costs by more than 60%. Finally, a countrywide analysis of pipeline availability constraints for the year 2030 shows a cost reduction of the transmission system by 30% in comparison to a newly built hydrogen pipeline system.


2019 ◽  
Vol 795 ◽  
pp. 225-232 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ming Fei Li ◽  
Jian Chen ◽  
Zheng Qiang Lei ◽  
Hong Long Zheng ◽  
Zai Rong Li

To introduce a method for reliability analysis of China's large-scale natural gas pipeline system, one should first have a method to calculate the reliability of pipe segments, compressors, valves, and other factors. This article models the rules prescribed in BS7910-2013, a guide to methods for assessing the acceptability of flaws in metallic structures, and combines pipeline reliability assessments from CSA Z662-2015 to present a method (based on the Monte Carlo method) to calculate the failure probability/reliability of long-distance pipelines containing a large number of girth weld defects. The method involves the destruction of plastic material, brittle fracture failure analysis, consideration of the division of units by using pipeline area classes for calculation, and reliability index analysis. The results of a magnetic flux leakage (MFL) in-line inspection (ILI) of a defective girth weld from a section of a pipeline in China are used to demonstrate how to determine the reliability of the entire pipeline.


2012 ◽  
Vol 268-270 ◽  
pp. 1244-1248
Author(s):  
Shan Bi Peng ◽  
En Bin Liu ◽  
Xiao Chun Du ◽  
Rong Lin Hong

With the growth of the natural gas market, the long distance natural gas pipeline system is getting more and more important in nowadays. As a united and enclosed hydraulic system, the operation conditions of the whole line will be changed by the influence of the condition change in one station. On the one hand, the condition change made people analyze operation scheme more difficult, on the other hand, pipeline system operating conditions directly affect the relationship between the production and the sales of natural gas. Therefore, the operation of the gas pipeline must be optimized, which brings huge economic and social benefits. This paper constructed a simulation model of a long distance natural gas pipeline by TG.net, and then analyzed the change of the operating condition of the pipeline after a compressor station shut down, found out the regularity.


Author(s):  
Augusto Garcia-Hernandez ◽  
Klaus Brun

Energy required to transport the fluid is an important parameter to be analyzed and minimized in pipeline applications. However, the pipeline system requirements and equipment could impose different constraints for operating pipelines in the best manner possible. One of the critical parameters that it is looked at closely, is the machines’ efficiency to avoid unfavorable operating conditions and to save energy costs. However, a compression-transport system includes more than one machine and more than one station working together at different conditions. Therefore, a detailed analysis of the entire compression system should be conducted to obtain a real power usage optimization. This paper presents a case study that is focused on analyzing natural gas transport system flow maximization while optimizing the usage of the available compression power. Various operating scenarios and machine spare philosophies are considered to identify the most suitable conditions for an optimum operation of the entire system. Modeling of pipeline networks has increased in the past decade due to the use of powerful computational tools that provide good quality representation of the real pipeline conditions. Therefore, a computational pipeline model was developed and used to simulate the gas transmission system. All the compressors’ performance maps and their driver data such as heat rate curves for the fuel consumption, site data, and running speed correction curves for the power were loaded in the model for each machine. The pipeline system covers 218 miles of hilly terrain with two looped pipelines of 38″ and 36″ in diameter. The entire system includes three compressor stations along its path with different configurations and equipment. For the optimization, various factors such as good efficiency over a wide range of operating conditions, maximum flexibility of configuration, fuel consumption and high power available were analyzed. The flow rate was maximized by using instantaneous maximum compression capacity at each station while maintaining fixed boundary conditions. This paper presents typical parameters that affect the energy usage in natural gas pipeline applications and discusses a case study that covers an entire pipeline. A modeling approach and basic considerations are presented as well as the results obtained for the optimization.


Author(s):  
Augusto Garcia-Hernandez ◽  
Klaus Brun

Energy required to transport the fluid is an important parameter to be analyzed and minimized in pipeline applications. However, the pipeline system requirements and equipment could impose different constraints for operating pipelines in the best manner possible. One of the critical parameters that is looked at closely, is the machines’ efficiency to avoid unfavorable operating conditions and to save energy costs. However, a compression-transport system includes more than one machine and more than one station working together at different conditions. Therefore, a detailed analysis of the entire compression system should be conducted to obtain a real power usage optimization. This paper presents a case study that is focused on analyzing natural gas transport system flow maximization while optimizing the usage of the available compression power. Various operating scenarios and machine spare philosophies are considered to identify the most suitable conditions for an optimum operation of the entire system. Modeling of pipeline networks has increased in the past decade due to the use of powerful computational tools that provide good quality representation of the real pipeline conditions. Therefore, a computational pipeline model was developed and used to simulate the gas transmission system. All the compressors’ performance maps and their driver data such as heat rate curves for the fuel consumption, site data, and running speed correction curves for the power were loaded in the model for each machine. The pipeline system covers 218 miles of hilly terrain with two looped pipelines of 38″ and 36″ in diameter. The entire system includes three compressor stations along its path with different configurations and equipment. For the optimization, various factors such as good efficiency over a wide range of operating conditions, maximum flexibility of configuration, fuel consumption and high power available were analyzed. The flow rate was maximized by using instantaneous maximum compression capacity at each station while maintaining fixed boundary conditions. This paper presents typical parameters that affect the energy usage in natural gas pipeline applications and discusses a case study that covers an entire pipeline. A modeling approach and basic considerations are presented as well as the results obtained for the optimization.


Author(s):  
A. K. Malkogianni ◽  
A. Tourlidakis ◽  
A. L. Polyzakis

Geopolitical issues give rise to problems in the smooth and continuous flow of oil and natural gas from the production countries to the consumers’ development countries. In addition, severe environmental issues such as greenhouse gas emissions, eventually guide the consumers to fuels more suitable to the present situation. Alternative fuels such as biogas and coal gas have recently become more attractive because of their benefits, especially for electricity generation. On the other hand, the use of relatively low heating value fuels has a significant effect to the performance parameters of gas turbines. In this paper, the impact of using four fuels with different heating value in the gas turbine performance is simulated. Based on the high efficiency and commercialization criteria, two types of engines are chosen to be simulated: two-shaft simple and single-shaft recuperated cycle gas turbines. The heating values of the four gases investigated, correspond to natural gas and to a series of three gases with gradually lower heating values than that of natural gas. The main conclusions drawn from this design point (DP) and off-design (OD) analysis is that, for a given TET, efficiency increases for both engines when gases with low heating value are used. On the contrary, when power output is kept constant, the use of gases with low heating value will result in a decrease of thermal efficiency. A number of parametric studies are carried out and the effect of operating parameters on performance is assessed. The analysis is performed with customized software, which has been developed for this purpose.


Author(s):  
S. Eshati ◽  
M. F. Abdul Ghafir ◽  
P. Laskaridis ◽  
Y. G. Li

This paper investigates the relationship between design parameters and creep life consumption of stationary gas turbines using a physics based life model. A representative thermodynamic performance model is used to simulate engine performance. The output from the performance model is used as an input to the physics based model. The model consists of blade sizing model which sizes the HPT blade using the constant nozzle method, mechanical stress model which performs the stress analysis, thermal model which performs thermal analysis by considering the radial distribution of gas temperature, and creep model which using the Larson-miller parameter to calculate the lowest blade creep life. The effect of different parameters including radial temperature distortion factor (RTDF), material properties, cooling effectiveness and turbine entry temperatures (TET) is investigated. The results show that different design parameter combined with a change in operating conditions can significantly affect the creep life of the HPT blade and the location along the span of the blade where the failure could occur. Using lower RTDF the lowest creep life is located at the lower section of the span, whereas at higher RTDF the lowest creep life is located at the upper side of the span. It also shows that at different cooling effectiveness and TET for both materials the lowest blade creep life is located between the mid and the tip of the span. The physics based model was found to be simple and useful tool to investigate the impact of the above parameters on creep life.


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