LET US INTRODUCE 'NATURALHY' PIPELINE NETWORK IN NORTHEAST ASIA: AS AN ESSENTIAL INFRASTRUCTURE TO DISTRIBUTE HIGHLY EFFICIENT ENERGY SYSTEMS TO REDUCE CO_2 EMISSION

摘要

In order to reduce CO_2 emission to prevent global warming, the most promising way for eleotric generation in the Northeast Asia is to introduce highly efficient distributed energy systems such as cogeneration including micro gas turbines and/or fuel cells. All of these energy systems should be based on natural gas as fuel, and/or on "naturalhy" (or "hythane" ), which is a mixture of hydrogen and natural gas (methane), and, finally, on pure hydrogen in near future. This paper presents a brief survey of these new energy systems. In accordance with the direction of introducing these highly efficient energy systems, natural gas demand in the Northeast Asia should be drastically increased. To meet the big demand estimation, it is essential to have an infrastructure as pipelines. As it is well known, in Europe, over 800,000km high pressure natural gas trunk pipeline networks have already been existed. In North America, there has been 440,000km in length existed. On the other hand, in Asia, we have nothing. This paper also proposes to construct the Northeast Asian Pipeline Network, by which natural gas is transported from candidate sources in East Siberia and in Central Asia to China, Mongolia, Korea, North Korea and Japan. These pipelines should also be used to transport "naturalhy", and finally to transport pure hydrogen in near future.