Towards a hydrogen economy - an IMechE and IChemE joint event

On 8 November, IMechE and IChemE will jointly host a seminar on hydrogen - “Towards a hydrogen economy”.

Hydrogen is often proposed as a future clean source of energy, but often the production of the hydrogen in the first place and the technical challenges in its use are not clearly articulated.

The Towards a hydrogen economy event should be an excellent forum at which to build a good understanding of the potential for and challenges of hydrogen as a usable form of energy. With significant changes taking place in transportation and heating in particular, there is increasing pressure on our existing infrastructure. Strategic and practical thinking will be required in order to arrive at appropriate infrastructure solutions and technology development.

The event will cover:

• Political drivers
• The hydrogen market
• Health and safety
• Hydrogen production technologies
• Technical challenges
• Sustainability issues
• Different uses for hydrogen
• Case studies.

The IMechE hosted a gas workshop on 6 June, attended by industry experts, to explore ways of making the UK gas network more sustainable through reducing dependency on fossil fuel. This output of the workshop fed into the production of a report on sustainable gas. This is currently in draft form and is expected to be published imminently. Discussions on hydrogen featured strongly in the workshop and recommendations on the use of hydrogen in our existing gas networks are expected in the final report. It is intended that a link to this IMechE initiative will be made with the “Towards a hydrogen economy” event and in doing so, strengthen the cooperation between the IChemE and the IMechE in this area.

Towards a hydrogen economy
The “Towards a hydrogen economy” event is being organised by a member of EESG, Andy Brown; two EESG members are to speak at the event:

• Ian Arbon will be discussing hydrogen compression, storage and transport, addressing the peculiarities of hydrogen in comparison with other fuel gases and related technical challenges.
• Rupert Blackstone will be talking about the sustainability of hydrogen as an energy vector, covering potential sources of hydrogen, conversion efficiencies and comparison with alternatives.