Hydrogen

EPRG and Hydrogen in 2022 and going forward in 2023

The past year has seen a number of activities from EPRG and its members to step to the challenge by the European Union to enable safe and reliable transportation of hydrogen. Many activities are undertaken by the members and by enabling exchanges and discussions through the committees and the  hydrogen topic group EPRG translated this into projects of value for the whole EPRG and the communities we all operate in.

Full and Large scale Testing

In 2022 two interrelated projects started with the aim of extending the knowledge of the behaviour of transmission pipes when it comes to toughness and fatigue crack growth when gaseous hydrogen is transported. The first project is aimed at development of a standardized test method for pipeline materials for hydrogen service. The second project is aimed at understanding the behaviour of a full pipe when it comes to gaseous hydrogen transport. The relation between the two project is using the same material for the small and full scale testing. This enable EPRG to compare the outcome of the various small scale tests being developed with  real pipe behaviour. The outline of the full scale test was presented at the JTM in Edinburgh and at the hydrogen discussion group of the 2022 ASME PVP conference in Las Vegas. The current time path is to start the full scale pressure cycling in the first quarter of 2023 and we hope to see results during the second half of 2023. This aligns with the expected first results of the small scale testing. So by the end of 2023 we can, pending on actual progress, start to analyse the combined results.

International cooperation

In 2022 EPRG cooperated with the Australian APGA's Future Fuels-crc, the European Gas Research Group GERG and PRCI's Emerging Fuels Institute to exchange on the respective roadmaps for research and held panel sessions with subject matter experts on various topics related to the hydrogen domain. Among the topics discussed are, impact on integrity assessment, required testing when changing from natural gas service to hydrogen service, ongoing researches in the groups and related organizations. The cooperation resulted in a number of short documents listing the impact of hydrogen compared to natural gas operations with the following topics addressed;

  • pipeline integrity
  • blending safety, inspection and maintenance
  • blending and separation
  • compressor stations
  • blending and gas quality
  • storage

These papers can be accessed with the following link.

Input for codes and standards

The Hydrogen topic group held a workshop with the members in September 2022 were the progress and research of the members was discussed. The members present reviewed all primary topics identified when hydrogen gas needs to be transported in the various application, on shore, off shore and storage, this resulted in an overview of items which need to be addressed in the codes and standards related to these applications. Currently the hydrogen topic group is working on a white paper which will serve as input to the applicable codes to give guidance on the changes needed to include gaseous hydrogen in the scope of these existing codes. This work is expected to be completed in the second quarter of 2023.