The Partial Discharge in High-pressure Flowing Hydrogen in a Novel Combined Green Pipe-Cable

The world’s first energy island is under planning in the North and Baltic Seas. Faced with the development of energy islands with P2X, a novel concept combining power cables and hydrogen pipelines is proposed, whose central conductor can transmit electricity and whose outer pipe can transport hydrogen at the same time. This paper develops a preliminary methodology to investigate the feasibility of this concept. The corona discharge characteristics in high-pressure flowing hydrogen have been studied experimentally. As expected, the partial discharge is less intense in the high-pressure hydrogen than in the low-pressure hydrogen, and the partial discharge is more intense in the hydrogen than in the air with the same pressure. The highest pressure of tested hydrogen is 3.5 atm. The dielectric performance of hydrogen with even higher pressure needs further study to verify it as an insulating material in the novel concept of the green pipe-cable. Low-speed-flowing hydrogen does not have an obvious effect on partial discharge activities, but the experiment using high-speed-flowing nitrogen shows the gas flow can impair the discharge activities. The future work of this concept will lie in the investigation of the partial discharge in higher-pressure and higher-flowing-rate hydrogen. The mixture of hydrogen and natural gas also has potential application prospects