Today, significant amounts of hydrogen are safely utilized in industry, but it is difficult to restrict and detect leakage. Hydrogen is a huge industrial commodity with a rapidly rising market. Its projected usage as a fuel has the potential to triple the market. More than 2 trillion cubic meters of water are produced each year, and the advent of hydrogen as a consumer fuel has resulted in a number of issues and increased worry about its safety, as well as a commensurate Hydrogen sensors for leak detection are gaining popularity. Since hydrogen leaks are difficult to detect, a special instrument called hydrogen gas leak detector is used to detect hydrogen leaks across the industries. Some of the properties of hydrogen is that it is odorless, colorless, High propensity to leak, Low ignition energy, Invisible flame, High energy content, Difficult to detect, lighter than air and diffuses rapidly.
Hydrogen leaks can be detected not easily but using some special instruments and in this article, we will be discussing different ways of detecting hydrogen in various industries.
Importance of gas leaks in today’s world
Many industrial gasses require gas detection to be manufactured, handled, and used safely. The $700 million gas detection industry, which is supplied by over twenty-five OEMs and hundreds of maintenance contractors, is mature and steady, with yearly growth predicted to be in the 3 to 6% range. In 2010, the worldwide hydrogen market was predicted to be 53 million metric tones, with the merchant hydrogen market accounting for 12 percent of the total and growing at a pace of 5-6 percent per year. Due to expanding rules, codes, and standards, there is a growing need for gas leak detection, which may be met cost-effectively with our technology. Downtime in the oil and gas refining business has become essential due to restricted refinery capacity, since most refineries are running at full capacity.
Once installed, electronic gas detectors need to be calibrated and maintained on a regular basis. When it comes to a hydrogen detector, Low-cost leak detectors may be replaced on a regular basis and for a low cost by the same personnel who execute the calibration. Fuel cells are becoming more popular, and hydrogen's potential as a fuel might triple the existing market.
Previous methods used in Hydrogen detection
There have been different ways in the past used to detect hydrogen leaks but had some drawbacks which is why the modern day portable hydrogen gas detector came to use. These are discussed below
- Bubble testing is the easiest approach since there is no continuous monitoring, inert gasses are used, and pressures are kept low.
- Catalytic combustion - detects heat of combustion at low concentrations, but not inert surroundings or pure hydrogen, and is not hydrogen-specific
- Electrochemical - sensors use a liquid electrolyte and require a gas permeable membrane for the hydrogen to reach the electrolyte, but varying temperature affects gas diffusion, making the sensor unreliable
- Thermal conductivity - works well in stable environments with minimal temperature change, background gas must have conductivity very different from hydrogen
- Mass Spectrometers Are very sensitive, costly, need trained operators, and might take a long time to respond
- Gas chromatographs are comparable to mass spectrometers in that they suffer from the same drawbacks.
- Ultrasonic leak detection - technology is improving, but it still can't pinpoint the specific site of a leak or tell if a flammable combination is present.
- Heat sensors and glow plugs - a glow plug ignites any flammable combination, while a heat sensor detects the fire.
- Semi-conducting is a term used to describe something that is made from Surface effects with a minimum oxygen concentration and are used in oxygen sensors. Although this method is novel, it does not operate in inert atmospheres and performance diminishes at lower temperatures.
How do Hydrogen Leak detectors work in general
A hydrogen sensor chip activates in the presence of hydrogen in a hydrogen gas detector. Because the hydrogen sensor chip is so sensitive, it can even detect tiny quantities of hydrogen in exhaled breath! The Hydrogen Leak Detector sniffer tip is placed along the suspected pipe and a 5 percent Hydrogen 95 percent Nitrogen tracer gas combination is used to find leaks. The Hydrogen Tracer Gas will escape if there is a leak, and LOKtracer will react. The Hydrogen Leak Detector raises its beeping and the number of lights on the panel in proportion to the amount of hydrogen detected when a leak is detected. As long as the equipment is permeable to gas, this method will operate even if it is buried or covered.
Methods of Hydrogen leakage detection used currently
Since the past methods explained above had some or the other drawbacks, those methods of hydrogen leakage detection are not used any more in the industries. There are modern ways of detecting hydrogen leaks now
Hydrogen vs Bubble Testing
The widely acknowledged low-cost way of detecting leaks is bubble testing. Bubbles are created at the source of the leak using soap and water solutions. Submerge the test piece in water and watch for bubbles as an alternative. These approaches, however, have a reduced sensitivity. Using a hydrogen mixture tracer gas increases sensitivity by at least 1000 times. In addition, leaks that do not form a bubble can be detected using the other Hydrogen Leak Detectors in service type applications.
Modern Methods of leakage testing
Infrared cameras have become considerably more common with maintenance personnel as a more recent progression in hydrogen gas detection equipment. Thermal imaging cameras, also known as infrared cameras, have been effectively used to identify inadequate insulation in buildings and to locate heat-related safety issues in electrical systems. Optical Gas Imaging with thermal cameras, which uses SF6 as a tracer gas, became popular a few years ago. Because just a little amount of CO2 (usually 3-5 percent) is supplied to the hydrogen as a tracer gas to make leaks apparent to the OGI Camera, the purity of the hydrogen in the turbine is preserved, and regular producing operations can continue.
Additionally, the requirement for shielding labourers from dangerous gases is encouraging an interest in gas identification hardware across different businesses.
Unofficial laws like the American Society of Heating Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Engineers and Occupational Safety and Health Administration have commanded the establishment of gas leak detector is for wellbeing and security purposes, which is additionally adding to the market development.
Government bodies overall are putting forth attempts to decrease the oil and gas methane emanations, thus provoking an interest in gas identification hardware.
Infrared gas discovery sensors are generally utilized for methane location as these finders are fundamental for checking effectiveness and security in the scope of uses.
Diminishing methane outflows is viewed as one of the financially savvy techniques for cutting worldwide emanations.
HART is an instrumentation interchanges convention that gives steady and uniform correspondence without upsetting 4-20mA simple signs.
