Thermodynamic ($p,\rho,T$) characterization of a reference high-calorific natural gas mixture when hydrogen is added up to 20 % (mol/mol)

TL;DR

This study provides high-precision experimental density data for natural gas mixtures with up to 20% hydrogen, validating existing equations of state and highlighting deviations at high pressures and low temperatures.

Contribution

It offers the first detailed experimental density data for hydrogen-enriched natural gas mixtures up to 20% hydrogen, enabling validation of reference equations of state.

Findings

Experimental densities align with equations of state for pure natural gas.

Deviations increase with hydrogen content, especially at low temperatures and high pressures.

Existing equations may need refinement for hydrogen-enriched mixtures.

Abstract

The injection of hydrogen into the natural-gas grid is an alternative during the process of a gradual decarbonization of the heat and power supply. When dealing with hydrogen-enriched natural gas mixtures, the performance of the reference equations of state habitually used for natural gas should be validated by using high-precision experimental thermophysical data from multicomponent reference mixtures prepared with the lowest possible uncertainty in composition. In this work, we present experimental density data for an 11-compound high-calorific (hydrogen-free) natural gas mixture and for two derived hydrogen-enriched natural gas mixtures prepared by adding (10 and 20) mol-% of hydrogen to the original standard natural gas mixture. The three mixtures were prepared gravimetrically according to ISO 6142-1 for maximum precision in their composition and thus qualify for reference materials. A single-sinker densimeter was used to determine the density of the mixtures from (250-350) K and up to 20 MPa. The experimental density results of this work have been compared to the densities calculated by three different reference equations of state for natural gas related mixtures: the AGA8-DC92 EoS, the GERG-2008 EoS, and an improved version of the GERG-2008 EoS. While relative deviations of the experimental density data for the hydrogen-free natural gas mixture are always within the claimed uncertainty of the three considered equations of state, larger deviations can be observed for the hydrogen-enriched natural gas mixtures from any of the three equations of state, especially for the lowest temperature and the highest pressures.