Leaderboard

As someone who worked with Hydrogen gas on an industrial scale and saw in practice just how explosive the stuff is and just how difficult it is to safely contain I wonder if the boffins who think it is the fuel of the future have any practical experiance of the stuff. The Stocksbridge Works Light Products used huge quantities of the stuff as an atmosphere gas during the annealing of high quailty stainless steel strip and wire. It was delivered in large trailers with either about ten very big steel cylinders along the length of the trailer (4+3+2+1) or in smaller cylinders in frames across the width. These trailers would be discharged into static banks and piped in copper pipes around the factory. The stuff has a very wide explosive limit of combustion, approx 4% to 75 % and the flame speed is phenominal. Under certain conditions it can even detonate in a similar way to high explosives. It will seek out the smallest leak to escape, It's molecular size is so small. We used it as an "inert" gas within sealed retorts that the steel was pulled through. It is inert in the sense that the steel which was at about 1050 degrees celsius does not tarnish. In the smaller wire furnaces the wire was pulled through steel tubing with a tee junction in the middle for the H2 feed. The ends were stuffed with ceramic fibre to limit the gas flow. When the fuel tech lads had measured the H2 content the ends were carefully lit, often with a loud bang. The carcase of the furnace was flooded with nitrogen at an higher pressure than the H2 to keep the stuff in the retorts as the gas would otherwise escape through the hot steel as if it wasn't there. I was working one day on an electrical panel about 30 feet away when I was hit in the back by a piece of ceramic fibre about the same size and mass as a cotton wool ball. It propelled me into the panel (thankfully not live) and caused a bruise about 6 inches wide. It would have a mass of a few grams. What had happened was that the stuffing had fallen out of the other end of the pipe, air had got in and the very rapid flames spread down the tube had compressed the remaining gas to detonate and eject the other plug of fibre from the other end. Do I want an hydrogen fuelled house, no fear. Natural Gas explosions can demolish a house, Hydrogen explosions would deposit it in the next town. If they are going to produce the H2 by electrolysis from electricity, why not use the electricity to heat the houses. Technology exists now to store vast amounts of power when the sun is not shing or the wind blowing. Just a thought. hilldweller.