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[deleted] t1_iwq95pj wrote

Reply to comment by Popswizz in Overhyping hydrogen as a fuel risks endangering net-zero goals by filosoful

That's not really a niche usage, pretty much every home and cooker in Europe is powered by natural gas. It's not an economic suggestion by any means, it's a green one due to the speed it can be rolled out. It's far less of a logistical nightmare than replacing every boiler (of which a high percentage don't have the required hot water tanks, or the space to accommodate them) with heat pumps over the same time period. Do we even have enough heating engineers to change 200 million homes over in the few years it would take to replace methane with hydrogen at the distribution level?

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Popswizz t1_iwqq8at wrote

It's niche because not all pipeline are able to accommodate hydrogen in large quantity, because not all boiler can accommodate high percentage of hydrogen, because not all green energy powerplant is near enough a pipeline to link to it with their hydrogen production, so it's niche because logistical it's a nightmare not because it's not technically doable

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Tenrath t1_iwqdc4a wrote

I could be wrong, but I think there are also changes required at the consumption end to accommodate the change in gas. Same reasons why a propane boiler and natural gas boiler are not interchangeable without modification kits.

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[deleted] t1_iwqe6y7 wrote

There'd be small changes, yeah. I'm on the aircraft side of things, but assuming they're similar enough it'd be a component analogous to the flame holder that would be the main issue. There's a minimum hole size a flame can propagate through that depends on the gasses.

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