There is continuing growth across hydrogen supply, transmission and distribution, and end-uses this past year.

The release of the Hydrogen Insights 2022 report underlined a need to promote hydrogen projects over the final investment decision (FID) line, with crucial recommendations for industries to accelerate the market in a zero-carbon driven world.

Despite the need for more progress, there has been considerable development across the entire hydrogen industry.

In terms of supply, the report estimated that the global industry has installed approximately 800 kilo tonnes per year of low-carbon hydrogen capacity, with around 550MW of water electrolysis.

The report states that electrolyser capacity grew by around 80% between 2020 and 2021.

About ²/₃ of the capacity serves industrial end uses such as ammonia plants or refineries, with mobility taking around 10% of the total capacity.

Global hydrogen infrastructure is steadily evolving and maturing with further developments across pipelines, refuelling stations, and global hydrogen shipments.

Nearly 4,500km of hydrogen pipelines transmit grey hydrogen to industrial end-users. There are several projects in Northern Africa, Europe, UK, and California (US) that are testing the blending of hydrogen in natural gas pipelines. Around 700 hydrogen stations were installed globally by the end of 2021. Approximately half of these stations are in Japan, South Korea, and China, which saw a 35% rise in annual growth. Despite progress, Europe and the US both have seen slower growth at about 20%.

There is slow progress in the seaborne hydrogen trade too, with small-scale deliveries of clean hydrogen being shipped in 2020 and 2021. Despite this, there has been three pilot schemes that carried clean ammonia, liquid hydrogen, and liquid organic hydrogen carriers (LOHC) in the last three years.

There has been a 65% increase in the sales of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. The total sales were roughly 17,000 vehicles. Commercial vehicles accounted for 10% of sales, around ³/₄ consisting of hydrogen fuel cell buses and the remainder being trucks. Passenger vehicles also saw substantial growth, with around 15,000 vehicles being sold worldwide in 2021. 55% of these sales were seen in South Korea, 20% in North America, and 15% in Japan.

Industrial end use of hydrogen has a lot of interest, but large-scale plants are yet to be built. There are 27 renewable hydrogen projects which have reached FID. 20 of those projects are in Europe and are used to produce clean ammonia, methanol, steel, and synthetic fuels. Ammonia is at the forefront, with seven projects that have reached FID and three projects that are operational. Likewise, methanol has seven projects that have reached the FID stage. Unfortunately, no full-scale plants have reached the FID stage as of yet but there is potential.

However, suppliers are preparing and have installed manufacturing plants for equipment such as electrolysers and fuel cells. Around 3.5GW of electrolysis manufacturing capacity has been installed globally, with another 3.5GW expected to be installed during 2022.  Fuel cells, at this time, have boasted capacity of around 11GW. Vehicle OEMs have created 87 fuel cell vehicle platforms to date, the majority of which are platforms for fuel cell buses, as well as trucks and light vehicles.

In line with this expansion, companies are actively investing in hydrogen, both to develop projects to supply and consume clean hydrogen. As well as in the hydrogen stakeholders and innovators themselves. Research has found that stakeholders are investing roughly £3.5bn in viability studies for projects that are yet to reach an FID. Historically, companies have only invested about £1.8bn into such studies. Globally, investors have spent around £6.5bn on fuel cell and electrolyser suppliers in 2021, which is almost double to that spent in 2020.

Hydrogen looks to be the fuel of the future! Many industries and companies are looking to switch to hydrogen, and we can help with that. We make gas mixing equipment for all different types of gases and our focus has been on the development and manufacture of gas mixing panels for hydrogen. So, if this is something that interests you, get in contact for more information.

Once again, there is a shortage of CO₂ and it seems that the shortage is everywhere, which leaves many industries with issues to overcome.

At the least, it means fighting for something that normally is readily available. At most, you risk losing a degree of production that you are perfectly set up to achieve.

Adding to these issues, you are probably facing a hike in surcharges for the CO₂ gas you can get a hold of, which makes managing your costs very difficult and unpredictable.

So, if getting hold of CO₂ gas is proving difficult and you are looking for ways to gain a little more control over your processes. Or, if you want to have some flexibility with the rate of CO₂ you do use, there are a couple of things you can consider.

You might consider checking the amount of CO₂ you are using, to make sure that you are not overusing what you have or using more than you need too. BSL offer a range of CO₂ measuring devices, CO₂ analysers which use various technologies; Ultrasonic, Single Wavelength Infra-Red, Dual Wavelength Infra-Red.

If you are putting CO₂ into gas cylinders with other gases, we have Gas Analysers that can measure the final CO₂ content in a mixed gas cylinder after filling and settling.

If you are mixing CO₂ with other gases, on your site with a Gas Mixer, we have Analysers that will enable you to check on the final mixture of gas.

We have handheld systems, wall mounted systems, systems that give you a 4 to 20 mA signal for data capture purposes and systems to measure final mixed gas composition in food packs.

We can also help you with your Gas Mixers too. BSL provide both Pre-set and Adjustable Gas Mixers. You might want to consider if the gas mixer you have needs the amount of CO₂ you are currently using. Or could your process be just as effective by reducing the CO₂ a little?

A number of our customers have come to this exact conclusion. They have found that they are using a higher CO₂ amount in their mixed gas than they need for their process to be effective.

Some have simply asked us to reduce the CO₂ content in our pre-set systems to something they can still live with but may reduce their CO₂ consumption significantly.  Taking a 30% CO₂ in Nitrogen for food packing down to 25% for example.  It doesn’t sound like a huge change and may have no impact on the efficiency of the process.  But it could save a lot of money and worry for the CO₂ gas supply.

Some customers have asked us to fit a new Adjustable Gas Mixer in place of their existing pre-set Gas Mixer, so that they can adjust the levels up and down, not for the process or application itself, but to align with the gases they can readily get at any given time.  And in combination with a Gas Analyser, it will help them record what mixed gas concentration they have had historically at any time. This can then be linked to the batches they are producing for traceability.

There are some applications and customers who are particularly interested in gas leaks. CO₂ leaks are of course dangerous, especially in small and enclosed spaces.  Some are interested in a simple system to be able to determine where they have leaks and the size of those leaks too. 

A Pub Cellar is a great example of this as a leak of CO₂ and Nitrogen is potentially dangerous to staff. So, by conserving gases, it will save you money and reduce hazards.

Another example is a welding gas line, which may contain a mixture of CO₂ and Argon. Being able to simply check for a leak and have some idea of how big it is, could save on gases and a lot of unnecessary expense.

So, if any of these ideas fit with what you have been thinking, please feel free to contact us and see if we can help make this situation easier.

Unexpected items in the bagging area

You’ve put a lot of time and effort into your food manufacturing process. You’ve sourced your ingredients, prepared and processed them to your own high standards and those of your industry and now you’ve reached the final hurdle – getting them into the hands of your customers in perfect condition and presented in the best possible way to help you stand out from every other product on the shelves. Packaging design is a critically important part of this, it’s your brand’s message and your differentiator, but it can also be a highly technical challenge too. Modified Atmosphere Packaging (MAP), sometimes known as gas flushing, is one way of protecting and prolonging the shelf life of a huge variety of food items.

Air is all around us and many living things need it to survive, but in contact with food it can allow some undesired processes to take place. Air itself is a mixture of gases, mostly Nitrogen and Oxygen. Nitrogen is inert, it doesn’t easily react chemically and in a biological sense it doesn’t promote the growth of aerobic bacteria, yeasts or moulds that exist in the food, in Air and all around us. Nitrogen can almost be thought of as a gaseous void filler and is sometimes used in pure form to provide mechanical protection for fragile items like potato crisps. Oxygen on the other hand can interact chemically with the food, Changing the appearance or causing fats and oils to turn rancid. It also provides a supportive environment for aerobic life to thrive.

If Air is a gas mixture that has some unfortunate properties, then replacing it with mixtures of other, more beneficial gases that can help to prolong the shelf life and maximise profit for retailers is a logical solution, and that’s MAP. Common choices for MAP gases are mixtures of Carbon Dioxide and Nitrogen or Carbon Dioxide and Oxygen. Carbon Dioxide prevents bacteria and fungi from reproducing and reacts with water to form carbonic acid. This mild acidity has a preservative effect on the food. Oxygen makes another appearance, this time in a positive light. With Carbon Dioxide keeping a lid on unwanted bacterial and fungal growth, the ability of Oxygen to keep good colouring in red meats can shine through.

In terms of supply modes, MAP gases optimised for specific foods are available pre-mixed in cylinders from all the major industrial gas companies, and for larger food processors gas mixing on site is an option. This can add a further layer of flexibility by allowing you to adjust the MAP gas mixture to suit the unique characteristics of your own products or even to easily allow your existing machines to handle products with differing in-house or retailer MAP specifications.

Now for the mystery – how can the gas mixture measured in the pack sometimes not match the mixture provided by the supply system? Maybe your gas analyser shows the Carbon Dioxide – Nitrogen mixture you expect to see, but somehow there is also Oxygen? Maybe some of the Carbon Dioxide you know is going into the pack has ‘disappeared’? It’s of course well known that some foods will absorb an amount of Carbon Dioxide over time, but if you are seeing problems with packs fresh off the machine, then there may be something else going on. Before delving any further, the first thing to do is to be sure of your gas analysis from the pack. When was your gas analyser last calibrated? Do you have a certified close-tolerance calibration gas at the correct mixture on site that you can check the gas analyser against? If the analyser checks out ok, then the next question to ask is how can the MAP gas mixture change? Quite often, the answer is that the Air you have tried so carefully to exclude is somehow finding its way into the packs anyway. There are some potential causes that are more obscure than others. In the past we have seen cases of foods that have natural internal cavities, for example prepared whole fish, trapping air inside those cavities as they are packed, which is then released into the pack environment contaminating it with Air. Packing machines often have internal buffer tanks that are replenished between cycles from the wider gas supply system in the factory. Sometimes despite nominally being at a pressure much higher than the surroundings, a leaking pipe can suck in Air if the gas inside the pipe moves at high velocity, for example when re-filling a buffer tank. Probably the most common place for Air to get in though is during the packing cycle on the machine itself. Think of it this way: your packing machine has a few seconds within the packing cycle to displace as much Air as it can by injecting your chosen MAP gas. There just isn’t time for that to happen 100% perfectly, so it’s not so much that Air is getting in, more that it is simply not getting removed in the first place. We might call this the Gas Purge Efficiency of the packing machine, something that can be certainly optimised by adjusting the machine cycle but is unlikely to ever be perfect.

Let’s look at an example, suppose your MAP gas mix was 30% Carbon Dioxide in Nitrogen. Remember that gas mixtures have tolerances too, but for this example let’s assume it’s perfect. Despite what we know the MAP gas mix to be, your calibrated gas analyser shows a mixture of about 2.1% Oxygen, 27.3% Carbon Dioxide and the remainder Nitrogen in the packs themselves. What’s going on?

The composition of mixed gases is conventionally described on a volume basis, so we could instead think of the percentages as some unit of volume instead; a litre or a teaspoon, it doesn’t matter if they are all the same. We know our mixed gas is 30 ‘volumes’ of Carbon Dioxide and 70 volumes of Nitrogen, but our analyser can only see a Carbon Dioxide percentage of 27.3%, so there must be more than 100 volumes of some combination of gases in our pack. If we divide the known volume of Carbon Dioxide by its percentage in the pack atmosphere (30/27.3), we learn that there are 1.098 x the number of gas volumes in the pack than we thought. This means we have 100 volumes from our MAP gas, and about 10 volumes of some other gas. The first suspect is going to be Air that hasn’t been flushed out by the packing machine or was trapped internally in the food as it was packed.

As a check, what can we learn from the Oxygen that has been detected by the analyser? As mentioned above, Air is a mixture of gases, and that mixture is fairly constant. Near sea level, dry Air is 20.95% Oxygen, 78.08% Nitrogen and the last 0.97% or so is made up of Argon and a handful of other gases in amounts so tiny we don’t really need to consider them. If the pack mix has 2.1 volume units of Oxygen, and Air is 20.95% Oxygen, then (20.95/2.1) we see again that we must have about 10 units of Air.

We could say that our hypothetical packing machine has a Gas Purge Efficiency of 91% as it leaves 10 units of Air behind for every 110 total gas units in the finished packs.

The same kind of analysis can be applied to Carbon Dioxide – Oxygen mixtures for packing red meats. If there is more Oxygen and less Carbon Dioxide than you expect to find in the packs fresh off the machine, go looking for Air!

Can this be improved? This probably depends on the control system and design of the packing machine itself – maybe the purge time or purge flow rate can be increased slightly, or maybe the machine would benefit from some maintenance intervention or recalibration if this is a new package size? Another approach, if the Oxygen is at or below your accepted tolerances and you just need to get a bit more Carbon Dioxide into the packs is to simply increase the Carbon Dioxide component of the MAP gas at source until you get where you need to be. A common starting point is to increase the Carbon Dioxide component to nearer 33%, giving closer to a perfect 30% in the pack in the worked example above.

In all cases, your food packing machine manufacturer and your gas supplier will be glad to help you resolve these issues.

Got your liquid gases? Want mixed gases? We do the bit in the middle….

Even those without a day-to-day technical knowledge of Gas Distribution Systems can appreciate what a high-pressure gas cylinder is. They may not know the complexities, dangers and exact background of what it is and how it is produced and exactly what high pressure really means, but most people have seen one somewhere. They are very common in pubs, bars and restaurants. Fast food restaurants and swimming pools and of course most manufacturing facilities. People also see smaller units in their homes for oxygen for example and more recently now, many have a greater understanding of the importance of oxygen cylinders in hospitals.

Gas cylinders are of course available in many different sizes and weights and are filled with all sorts of gases and increasingly, all sorts of gas mixtures. Mixtures of CO2, Nitrogen and sometimes Oxygen for the beer, beverage and food packing applications. Mixtures of CO2, Argon, Helium and hydrogen for fabrication applications, welding, heat treatment. Mixtures of Helium for blowing up balloons and leak detection in pipelines.  Just a few examples of the many common everyday uses for gas cylinders or bottles as they are sometimes referred to.

For those businesses that begin small and evolve organically, industrial gas cylinders are a relatively simple starting point to early production. They are convenient to begin with and readily available from several of sources. And the chances are that the mix you need is already a common mixture supplied to many others. But as businesses grow, they may be fortunate to reach a point where gas cylinders don’t quite fulfill their new needs. And this can be for a few obvious reasons.

Cost is possibly the first factor users begin to question. With gas cylinders you generally pay for the gas inside the cylinder of course. But there are also costs associated with rental of the cylinders all the time you have them. There are most commonly charges associated with delivery of the cylinders and the removal of spent cylinders and so on. And you need to know that you have available to you back-up cylinders and a steady supply so that you don’t run out.

Convenience is possibly the next factor to wrestle with. There is the convenience of matching gas cylinder orders against production demand or need. There is the convenience of handling each gas cylinder and getting each cylinder to its point of use. And there is the convenience of trying to control the safety aspects of handling, connecting and disconnecting. The cylinders are heavy, they must not be dropped or damaged, they must be secured, and handlers should have some basic training in these aspects.

Choice is also a significant factor. Whilst there are many gas cylinder suppliers, they have their own restrictions, and it is not always possible to obtain the exact mix you need. And sometimes if you can get hold of it, you cannot always get hold of it without paying a premium.

Continuity also is an issue. Being able to continue to grow the business using gas cylinders as the source can simply become too difficult, too cumbersome and too labour intensive. The process of supplying cylinders can begin to be a bigger issue than other, more important parts of the process.

These factors are greatly over- simplified of course, but, whatever the combination of events or reasons, as gas demand increases, there will be a point at which it becomes interesting to consider being supplied with liquid gases, delivered into your liquid gas tanks. There are again several suppliers that can deliver liquid gas supplies reliably.

Liquid gas supplies are generally delivered on a pre-determined delivery schedule in much larger volumes directly into liquid tank storage systems. The cost basis is quite different from cylinder delivery of course, so this needs to be understood, however the unit costs for gases is much less, the more you use. And importantly a lot of the pressures mentioned earlier become much easier for the end user. Often the liquid tanks are away from the main factory or process and much more clearly the responsibility of the gas supplier. So, if the costs stack up for you, liquid gas supplies take a lot of the day-to-day handling away from the end user.

Of course, that still leaves one or two other factors such as choice and continuity to contend with.  But having a liquid gas supply of each gas available makes those things easier too.

Once you have your liquid supplies in place, they are either supplied to the plant as they are. Or they can be mixed together, to create the exact mix or mixtures you need for your process.

This is where a Gas Mixer from BSL Gas Technologies Ltd comes in to play to help with continuity and choice.

Mixed gas choice – Unlike with premixed gases in cylinders, the BSL Gas Mixer provides the opportunity to choose the gas mix needed for the process. The process can be presented with a pre-set gas mixer or with an adjustable mixer. Some gas mixtures are common. In the beverage/beer industry for example 30% CO2 in nitrogen and 60% CO2 in nitrogen are mixes you can often obtain in cylinder format. 

Anything else is very difficult to obtain cost effectively. But the BSL Gas Mixer will give you a much wider range to choose from. If you need anything between 20% and 80% CO2 in nitrogen for your beers for example, the gas mixing valves will happily provide this, and the mixer cost is not affected by the mix required.

The benefit of a BSL pre-set gas mixer is that there is great control over the process integrity. Whilst even a BSL pre-set gas mixer can be adjusted. It is deliberately difficult for unauthorized changes to be made. There are often tamper evident labels over the gas mixing valves also.

The benefit of a BSL adjustable gas mixer is that the end user can change the mix as they desire to meet different process demands. Food packing companies for example often ask for adjustable gas mixers for different packed products, although even in this situation often a food packing plant packs a range of similar products with similar mixed gas requirements.

And when designing a process plant, how you deliver mixed gas variation but at the same time still keeping control over the integrity of that installation can be accomplished using BSL Gas Mixing modules in a clever way. BSL can help you to figure this out exactly.

Continuity and growth of the process – This is an important element of any mixed gas distribution system. Whilst there will be a predictable flow requirement to begin with, it is often more difficult to predict future growth and demand. This part of the planning process is difficult because it has a knock- on affect to any equipment installed including the pipelines, valves and regulators, liquid tanks and the gas mixer also. 

With liquid gas supplies, tank sizes can be increased over time and additional pipelines can be added from them to the process as needs require it. The BSL gas mixer can also be easily upgraded. 

BSL have developed a very modular approach to designing gas mixers. Deliberately simple, it is possible to add mixing valve modules into existing gas mixing panels. And it is equally easy to add mixing panel modules to work alongside existing mixing panel modules.

That way you can install BSL mixing panels equipment as you require it. No need to purchase something much bigger now, for a guessed much bigger flow later. It is very common for our customers to simply extend their installations, when they feel they need to.

BSL Gas Technologies Ltd have been designing and making Gas Mixers and Gas Analysers and Gas handling equipment for more than 30 years. A significant leap forward in BSL designs was our ability to take the electrics and buffer tanks out of the system for you. Simplifying installations, reducing the number of things that can fail and making systems very easy to look after. And we know we have been very successful at that by the number of imitators we have.

The simplest of systems take your pure gases, vaporize them into gases or they may already be gases if they are from cylinders or MCP, and provide a regulates and protected supply to feed a BSL gas Mixer. The mixer in turn, mixes the gases proportionally as a pre-set mixture or as an adjustable mixer to give you the mixed gases you need.