Combustion chemistry of hydrogen-natural gas mixtures

The rise in renewable energy in Australia causes a pressing issue of energy storage: what to do with the excess electricity generated when the grid demand is low. One promising solution is to use the electricity to decompose water and store the produced hydrogen in natural gas pipelines. This approach offers enormous capacity for renewable energy storage compared with alternative means such as that used by Snowy Hydro. However, hydrogen and natural gas have very different combustion properties. For example, the flame speed of hydrogen is 7 to 8 times that of natural gas, and hydrogen is more likely to explode when pressure drops. This causes potential problems for home burners and industrial appliances, but the solutions are not well known. The aim of this internship is to carry out an experimental study of hydrogen-methane mixtures in a high-pressure flow reactor in the Thermodynamics Laboratory. The results of this work will be used to develop accurate chemical models for these mixtures for practical applications.

UoM Supervisors

• Dr. Mohsen Talei, Arc Discovery Early Career Researcher (Decra) and Senior Lecturer, Mechanical Engineering
• Dr. Robert Gordon, Senior Lecturer, Mechanical Engineering
• A/Prof. Yi Yang, Associate Professor, Mechanical Engineering
• Dr. Farzad Poursadegh, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Mechanical Engineering
• Dr. Eirini Goudeli, Lecturer, Chemical Engineering

How to apply

Applications are closed.