Impact on Canadian Residential End Use Appliances with the Introduction of Hydrogen into the Natural Gas Stream - An Application

Canada’s commitment to be net-zero by 2050, combined with ATCO’s own Environmental, Social and Governance goals has led ATCO to pursue hydrogen blending within the existing natural gas system to reduce CO2 emissions while continuing to provide safe, reliable energy service to customers. Utilization of hydrogen in the distribution system is the least-cost alternative for decarbonizing the heating loads in jurisdictions like Alberta, where harsh winter climates are encountered, and low-carbon hydrogen production can be abundant. ATCO’s own Fort Saskatchewan Hydrogen Blending Project began blending 5% hydrogen by volume to over 2,100 customers in the Fall of 2022 and plans to increase the blend rates to 20% hydrogen in 2023. Prior to blending, ATCO worked together with DNV to examine the impact of hydrogen blended natural gas to twelve Canadian appliances: range/stove, oven, garage heater, high and medium efficiency furnaces, conventional and on demand hot water heaters, barbeque, clothes dryer, radiant heater and two gas fireplaces. The tests were performed not only within the planned blend rates of 0-20% hydrogen but also to higher percentages to determine how much hydrogen can be blended into a system before appliance retrofits would be required. The testing was designed to get insights on safety-related combustion issues such as flash-back, burner overheating, flame detection and other performance parameters such as emissions and burner power. The experimental results indicate that the radiant heater is the most sensitive appliance for flashback, observed at 30 vol% hydrogen in natural gas. At 50% hydrogen, the range and the radiant burner of the barbeque tested were found to be sensitive to flashback. All other 9 appliances were found to be robust for flashback with no other short-term issues observed. This paper will detail the findings of ATCO and DNV’s appliance testing program including results on failure mechanisms and sensitivities for each appliance.