Is hydrogen safe to compress?

Question

Is hydrogen safe to compress?

Answer 1

Hardly.

Have you ever heard of the Hindenburg Disaster?

It was an airship filled with compressed Hydrogen, and a slight bit of heat made it ignite.

Answer 2

Any flammable has the potential to explode when compressed. That's what preignition ping or knock is in a car engine. The gas/air mixture explodes before the piston reaches the top of it's stroke and before the spark plug fires. Then the plug fires and creates another explosion. Hydrogen can be compressed but like the guy before said it's temperature must be continually lowered. Don't try this at home.

Answer 3

Hydrogen is not safe to compress.

If you compress hydrogen, it will explode or 'pop'. It is flammable.

=^-^=

Answer 4

It's perfectly safe to compress.

When it's being compressed to almost any pressure required, it is done in stages with each stage being cooled (removal of Heat of Compression) in order to prevent too great a heat build up.

In practice, every compound has a 'Critical Temperature' (Tc).

If the temperature of the gas is ABOVE the Critical Temperature, the gas can't be condensed, no matter what pressure is applied.

The 'Vapor Pressure' of a liquid at the critical temperature is called the 'Critical Pressure' (Pc). The vapor pressure of a liquid never gets greater than this critical pressure.

The Critical Temperature and Pressure and the Boiling Point of Hydrogen are....

Tc = -240°C:  Pc = 12.8atm and the BP = -252.8°C.

(In this case, as there is no Oxygen involved, the 'Hindenburg' disaster doesn't have any relationship to the process).