3D-CFD Analysis of Direct Hydrogen Feed-In into Natural Gas Pipelines

To supply hydrogen to the geographically decoupled demand sites, efficient hydrogen transport is necessary. The existing natural gas pipelines represent a promising transport solution, with the blended hydrogen content expected to steadily increase. An open issue of hydrogen blending is the mixing behavior. Therefore, the effects of different geometric parameters (diameters, angles), operating conditions (velocities, concentrations), and injection layouts (single- and multi-point) on the mixture quality during direct injection of hydrogen into a natural gas pipeline are studied using 3D CFD. The main goal is to find parameters and layouts leading to sufficient mixing quality over a range of operating conditions. The mixing quality is determined based on the coefficient of variation (COV). The results show that the momentum flux ratio is a key parameter governing the mixing behavior. However, a high momentum flux ratio alone does not guarantee sufficient uniformity for all operating conditions. For the investigated range, single-point injection cannot ensure reliable mixing quality, whereas multi-point layouts with higher hydrogen inlet velocities achieve sufficient uniformity.