Storage and transportation of Hythane/HNGB (hydrogen-natural gas blend) in the form of Gas Hydrate
Abstract
The transition towards sustainable energy systems requires safe, efficient, and practical solutions for hydrogen storage and transportation.
Blending hydrogen with natural gas offers a potential route for hydrogen integration into existing energy systems; however, conventional high-pressure storage and transportation present challenges related to material compatibility, hydrogen embrittlement, and operational safety.
Gas hydrates provide an alternative storage concept in which gas molecules are encapsulated within crystalline, hydrogen-bonded water structures.
This talk explores the potential of gas hydrate technology for storing and transporting hydrogen-natural gas blends (HNGB or Hythane®), and introduces a new research direction towards hydrogen storage in nanoporous confined hydrates.
The first part of the talk will present his doctoral research on the thermodynamics, formation kinetics, and storage stability of methane and hydrogen–methane hydrates containing 8-30 mol% hydrogen.
The influence of hydrate promoters on phase equilibrium, gas uptake, induction time, and hydrate growth was systematically investigated.
Hydrate pellets were subsequently produced and demonstrated storage stability over an extended period, highlighting the potential of hydrate-based storage beyond the formation stage.
Together, these studies established an experimental foundation for evaluating gas hydrates as a medium for Hythane storage and transportation.
Building on this work, his current research direction at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU), within CERE, aims to extend hydrogen storage towards confined mixed-gas hydrates formed from hydrogen containing gas mixtures.
The proposed research will investigate solid mateirals to determine how pore architecture, surface properties, and nanoscale confinement influence hydrate formation, stability, and hydrogen incorporation.
The resulting experimental data will be integrated with thermodynamic and kinetic modelling to evaluate confinement effects and develop predictive relationships between gas composition, porous host characteristics, hydrate stability, and hydrogen occupancy.
By connecting experimental advances in Hythane hydrate storage with fundamental investigations of hydrogen incorporation in confined hydrate structures, this research aims to establish a deeper understanding of the relationships between gas composition, porous host properties, hydrate formation, and storage performance.
The overarching goal is to advance the scientific basis for safer, more efficient, and potentially scalable gas hydrate-based hydrogen storage technologies.
Acknowledgements The author gratefully acknowledges his supervisors, tenure track researcher Jyoti Shanker Pandey and Professor Nicolas von Solms.
He acknowledges the funding support of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Postdoctoral Fellowship under the European Union’s Horizon Europe programme for the project HyLoStorGH (Project No. 118155), and the Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering, Technical University of Denmark (DTU). The author further would like to thank support from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, India, where the preliminary research was conducted during his Ph.D.