Decarbonization of industrial processes has become key to global efforts to limit climate change to an acceptable minimum. Governments around the globe have set ambitious targets for net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
Key elements to achieve decarbonization include reducing the demand for primary resources by increasing the circular economy, improving energy efficiency, using carbon-free fuels, reducing the uncontrolled release of hydrocarbons into the atmosphere, and electrifying the heat supply using renewable energy sources like wind, solar or hydropower. When carbon dioxide (CO2) generation cannot be avoided, carbon capture, usage, and storage (CCUS) can be used to reduce CO2 emissions.
Gas measurements are essential for optimizing, monitoring, and ensuring safety in many of the above activities. Tunable Diode Laser Absorption Spectroscopy (TDLAS), with its well-known advantages of fast response time, high reliability, selectivity, and sensitivity, is a powerful tool that can be used for these applications. Important examples include improving energy efficiency through proper process optimization that leads to reduced fuel consumption, detecting leaks in natural gas pipelines using open-path methane (CH4) analysers, and replacing carbon (C) with hydrogen (H2) as a reducing agent in steel production.
H2 has long been used in many industrial production processes, whether in the hydrogenation of petrochemicals, ammonia production or semiconductor manufacturing. Recently, much hope has been put on H2 as a carbon-free energy source for the future, and the Ukraine crisis has accelerated efforts to switch from fossil fuels to renewable alternatives.
With the development of a new energy sector and new carbon-free production processes, many existing production processes will have to be adapted or new processes introduced. This means that new tasks and challenges will also arise for gas instrumentation. With its inherent flexibility, TDLAS will play a key role here and contribute to the successful and safe decarbonization of the industry.
This presentation will show that H2 can be measured with TDLAS technology despite much initial scepticism, that the safety requirements of the hydrogen economy can be met, that H2 measurements in natural gas (fuel gas) are possible to determine calorific values, and finally that important impurities in H2 can also be quantified to protect equipment.
