Transient flow in pipelines of high-pressure hydrogen–natural gas mixtures

The purpose of this study is the numerical modeling of high-pressure transient flow of hydrogen–natural gas mixtures in rigid pipelines. The governing equations for such flows are two coupled, non-linear, hyperbolic, partial differential equations. The fluid pressure and velocity are considered as two principal dependent variables. The fluid is a homogeneous hydrogen–natural gas mixture for which the density is defined by an expression averaging the two gas densities where a polytropic process is admitted for the two components. The hydrogen-mixture mass ratio (or quality), assumed to be constant, is used in the mathematical formulation, instead of the void fraction which varies with pressure. The problem has been solved by the non-linear method of characteristics and the finite difference conservative method. To verify their validity, the computed results of the two numerical methods are compared for different values of the quality. The occurrence of pressure oscillations in hydrogen–natural gas mixture pipelines was studied as a result of the compression wave created by a rapid closure of downstream shut-off valve.