I know there's a lot talk about all this hydrogen and heat pumps which can be difficult to understand. I’m Steve at The Boiler Doctor and I'm just giving my opinion and brief overview of what potentially could happen and what's expected through the government schemes.
What I'm going to talk about this morning is hydrogen boilers and how they are going to work if they are going to become compatible and what the process is moving forward. so, the 3 types of hydrogen boilers
hydrogen blend compatible
to begin with to get people used to using that hydrogen is that your boiler and existing boiler that you already have in as long as its condensing can already work on a mix of hydrogen and natural gas which is 20% hydrogen 80% natural gas now domestic boilers have been demonstrated already to work safely on a 20% hydrogen blend which means if they put 20% hydrogen through the existing pipework and there's 80% natural gas your existing boiler you've already got in will continue to work if it is a condensing boiler, so some of the old older types that are non condensing wont-work with that bland but that immediately saves 20% of the carbon footprint 80% natural gas and 20% of the hydrogen means a 20 % saving.
hydrogen ready boiler
it's a boiler that could be installed to run on natural gas and then can be converted at a later date to work with hydrogen, Manufacturers are all working towards the 100% hydrogen boiler,
100% hydrogen boiler
there is a few key differences between hydrogen ready and 100% hydrogen and there are going to be a few differences inside the boiler
the main burner
This will be different because hydrogen has got a high flame speed and needs to be able to hold a stable flame so the main heat exchanger needs to be able to cope with the higher demands. Upgrade the gas and air natural gas and hydrogen need mixing with air to combust boilers use a fan, the fan might need an upgrade or more power to be able to mix that gas and air ratio
flame detection
so, an existing boiler now use what we call a Flame detection probe which detects that the flame within the boiler itself now hydrogen flames are completely invisible which means there will be no electrical signal able to run through the flame so there's got to be an upgrade to this component manufacturers have got to come up with a way of detecting that flame within the main burner
Electrical / pcb
an upgrade to the electrics may potentially be needed - so that's the 4 key areas that is going to be needed within the boiler. if you are having a new boiler installed you have nothing to worry about in terms of the hydrogen mix, its going to work. In conclusion there is no reason to panic or worry, but if you not educated on this yet you are never going to know. I hope that this has covered some key areas about getting a gas boiler installed
Thank you for reading
