An analysis of the potential safety issues associated with using H₂ sourced from America’s vast energy resources to build a sustainable future is now available for all to see on NETL’s website.

The H₂ Safety Review for Gas Turbines, SOFC and High Temperature H₂ Production was developed to review and summarize the unique safety challenges involved with the production, transportation and storage of H₂ as part of NETL’s H₂ Safety Field Work Proposal to support the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management’s strategic vision for safe, widespread and large-scale production and utilization of H₂ as a carbon-free energy storage medium.

“H₂ power could be a key contributor to a net-zero carbon emissions energy sector, but many technological and cost challenges still remain especially in matters of handling H₂ safely,” said Ben Chorpening, supervisor of the NETL’s Advanced Systems Integration Team and technical portfolio lead. “It’s our hope that this report will serve as a valuable resource for stakeholders in charting future H₂ projects and assist in building safe, sustainable bulk H₂ production and power generation infrastructure.”

H₂ is a versatile molecule, useful as a clean energy carrier and chemical precursor. H₂ is the most abundant element in nature, and it currently plays an important role in chemical production and petroleum refining. H₂ can be extracted from different sources such as fossil fuels, biomass, waste plastics and water. When combined with carbon capture and storage, natural gas reforming and gasification are well positioned to produce large quantities of H₂ from a variety of feedstocks, including waste coal with biomass, waste plastics or municipal solid waste.

New technologies such as solid oxide electrochemical cells (SOEC) and chemical looping are also being developed for H₂ production. However, H₂ does have several safety concerns that must be contended with through careful engineering design and diligent operations.

For example, compared to natural gas, H₂ has an increased flammability range and lower minimum ignition energy, which increases the likelihood of a fire starting from a H₂ leak. The lower ignition energy makes smaller sparks a concern. H₂ flames are nearly invisible, making small fires difficult to notice and posing increased risk of harm to unaware personnel.

There are also matters of operating costs and facility designs to consider when using H₂ safely. From a mechanical design standpoint, H₂ also causes embrittlement in many steels and alloys. Consequently, safe material selection for H₂ results in higher system costs than with natural gas.

In addition, the form of H₂ stored may have a significant impact on safety issues with production and utilization technologies. Liquid H₂ and ammonia offer potential benefits for storage and transportation of H₂ but pose some additional safety hazards.  

The report documents the unique safety issues for solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) and gas turbines fueled from H₂, and production of H₂ from fuel reforming, gasification, chemical looping and SOEC. This report includes the approaches presently used to address H₂ safety and identifies some potential technology advancements to improve the performance and reduce the cost for safety monitoring.

The H₂ safety report examines these concerns and more in detail, offering a valuable resource for future H₂ endeavors.