Energy measurement module validation for hydrogen/natural gas blends

One of the key challenges facing industries today is to move from fossil fuels to renewable energy in an effective, fast, and least disruptive manner. In this journey, it is widely anticipated that hydrogen is going to play a critical role in the future energy mix, particularly for decarbonising heavy transport and possibly domestic/industrial heat. To decarbonise heat, one promising solution (in the short to medium term) is going to be blending hydrogen in our natural gas network (up to 20% by volume of hydrogen is currently being investigated in the UK). While this looks minimal at first, it is nevertheless a significant first step in reducing the impact of CO2 emissions from household/industrial heating, which accounts for around 40% of UK's entire carbon emission. However, measuring blended gases in energy networks presents several challenges. Addressing these challenges requires the development of advanced measurement technologies, such as specialized sensors and calibration techniques that are tailored to these unconventional gases and their blends.

Hy-Met Limited has already taken the first step in addressing these challenges and has been developed an innovative core technology that uses a novel sensor and hardware design, that allows it to be fitted into existing ultrasonic smart gas meters. A further challenge lies in the determination of gas composition from blended volumes of natural gas, hydrogen, biogas/biomethane, and other unconventional gases/mixes and this project aims to develop a solution that meets this need.

Hy-Met and project partners will combine our knowledge/solutions to build a unique gas energy measurement meter. This combined approach would enable our measurement solution to simultaneously measure gas flow rates (i.e., how much is going through a pipe) and accurate analysis of the composition and/or key physical properties (i.e., calorific value) of the gas mixture in real-time, overcoming the challenges associated with conventional methods while we move to complex/hybrid gas networks in the future.