by Goldschmidt Conference
Scientists have developed a large-scale economical method to extract hydrogen (H2) from oil sands (natural bitumen) and oil fields. This can be used to power hydrogen-powered vehicles, which are already marketed in some countries, as well as to generate electricity; hydrogen is regarded as an efficient transport fuel, similar to petrol and diesel, but with no pollution problems. The process can extract hydrogen from existing oil sands reservoirs, with huge existing supplies found in Canada and Venezuela. Interestingly, this process can be applied to mainstream oil fields, causing them to produce hydrogen instead of oil.
Hydrogen powered vehicles, including cars, buses, and trains, have been in development for many years. These vehicles have been acknowledged to be efficient, but the high price of extracting the Hydrogen from oil reserves has meant that the technology has not been economically viable. Now a group of Canadian engineers have developed a cheap method of extracting H2 from oil sands. They are presenting this work at the Goldschmidt Geochemistry Conference in Barcelona.
“There are vast oil sand reservoirs in several countries, with huge fields in Alberta in Canada, but also in Venezuela and other countries” said Dr. Ian Gates, of the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Calgary, and of Proton Technologies Inc.).
Oil fields, even abandoned oil fields, still contain significant amounts of oil. The researchers have found that injecting oxygen into the fields raises the temperature and liberates H2, which can then be separated from other gases via specialist filters. Hydrogen is not pre-existing in the reservoirs, but pumping oxygen means that the reaction to form hydrogen can take place.
Grant Strem, CEO of Proton Technologies which is commercializing the process says “This technique can draw up huge quantities of hydrogen while leaving the carbon in the ground. When working at production level, we anticipate we will be able to use the existing infrastructure and distribution chains to produce H2 for between 10 and 50 cents per kilo. This means it potentially costs a fraction of gasoline for equivalent output”. This compares with current H2 production costs of around $2/kilo. Around 5% of the H2 produced then powers the oxygen production plant, so the system more than pays for itself.
HT/Earthling2
Once Hydrogen is removed from a Hydrocarbon, what’s left?
I doubt it’s the “diamonds” that might make the entire process economically, truly, self-sustaining.
(That is, profitable without taxpayer cash or subsidies or the need for them.)
I have doubts about this. If one injects oxygen into an environment of hydrocarbons and water and raises temperatures by oxiding the hydrocarbons in situ, then one will produce not only
but also 
and 
as well. What becomes of these gases? How does one “filter” them out?
Sounds a lot like making town gas using the water gas and shift reactions. This led to many a superfund site.
I am reticent to be totally critical of the claims made in this article but after reading the article I find it to be superficial and lacking a lot of specifics to get optimistic about the claims.
It would seem that there is a lot more to be revealed about the process and the separation necessary at ground level since it seems unlikely that just pure hydrogen is released.
Having worked on a major oil sands project I know that that project also had literally tons of sulfur released as part of the processing. Most refining processes release a lot of other substances during the thermal processes.
Short of toxic substances pure oxygen and pure hydrogen is two of the most difficult to elements normally handled. I have worked on numerous H2 plants and have seen the results of unwanted leaks, fires and explosions. Also we know that handling pure oxygen requires special precautions like Stainless steel piping because of fire hazzard, Nasa learned about this the hard way.
Lots of energy is required in compression in CO2 capture and hydrogen compressors are not cheap to run either.
It has been reported that a hydrogen powered car would normally have a 9000 psi tank for fuel storage and I would not sleep well with such a car in my garage.
I am not sure I would trust the public handling the fueling of their vehicle with 9000 psi Hydrogen.
Due to the small size of the atom and molecule conventional steels are subject to hydrogen attack and failure, those handling H2 in the refining process know how to design equipment for H2, it is not cheap.
These well known issues are dismissed in the article.
Catc,
Dismissing show stopping issues is frequently done during R&D when the supporters of the tech don’t like the answer.
This is very much like the neutron embrittlement problem for a commercially viable fusion tokamak vessel. Even if some group finally succeeds to get enough thermal power out of such a device to make electricity, after about 6 months of continuous operation, the neutron embrittlement of the vessel steel or titanium alloy will begin to reach critical levels such that it has to be replaced. And they are un-godly expensive to fabricate and install. They have to maintain a high vacuum inside the chambers. They have to allow radiation to pass through them to reach a working fluid to be heated by that radiation. The superconducting magnets around the vessel have to be chilled to 4K with liquid helium. An incredibility complex design to engineer and assemble. So that materials problem for a commercially viable fusion reactor is simply dismissed too, otherwise the research and jobs that tokamak fusion research provides would cease.
Same thing for folks at NASA pressing on with manned Mars mission concept designs. They simply have to dismiss the lethal interplanetary radiation problem the astronauts would receive on the outbound and return trips. At present or even envisioned propulsion designs, the trip out and back (ignoring the Mars surface time) takes around 300-400 days. That’s over a year exposed to the a steady onslaught of GCRs and possibly solar protons events. The space vehicle would have some shielding, but shielding means mass. And it is mass that must be accelerated to Mars, decelerated on arrival, and accelrated once again for the return to Earth. The fuel costs of the shielding alone are enormous budget busters. And without lots of shielding, it’s a suicide mission for a 4 person crew. Yet that doesn’t stop the money flow to keep studying and design concept vehicles. But it’ll never happen.
As for Proton Technologies, the website on “investors” has this statement:
“A substantial amount of the R&D budget is already being financed locally, through government grants for innovation and for promoting climate-friendly technology.”
The Canadian government is the “investor” in Proton. If all of what Proton Tech was pursuing was commercially viable, then private investors would be lined up out their doors with cash.
You finally have to realize these things are jobs programs paid for with tax money from the government.
NASA is very aware of the radiation and shielding required to go to Mars. Yes, you are correct; that is one of the things that makes putting people on Mars and getting them back so very difficult.
(There was an idea at one time by some entrepreneur to get volunteers to go to Mars and not come back, which makes the problem much less difficult.)
This is silly. Over 90% of the weight of usable hydrocarbon and over 85% of the usable energy of the hydrocarbon would be discarded (counting purification and compression of the hydrogen).
Another preposterous scheme.
Wow they’ve amazingly invented a process which was known in 1868!
I am astounded, nay floored, by their genius.
Ok, sorry, some technical differences but this is pretty silly. On the other hand if they can use this excuse to not dig up Alberta’s oil sands they can use the technology to process the up to 23 trillion tonnes of coal under the North Sea. Which would keep Europe in energy for a millenium or two.
Perhaps instead of wasting trillions on eco-destructive and economically suicidal windmill subsidy farms we could waste all that money on draining the North Sea. It would be great to see the reaction of the eco-lobby to the perfectly sensible notion of using all that coal, especially when you tell them displacing all that water would raise sea levels elsewhere.
At least you could go back to farming the Dogger Bank and going on extended walks to mainland Europe. What’s not to like?
At least we know steam power and engines work efficiently and safely – more than can be said for EVs and apparently hydrogen cars.
There is a simple way to transport this hydrogen using existing infrastructure in most places. You simple use carbon atom as a backbone and connect 4 hydrogen atoms to the carbon. Even better, you could link the carbon atoms into a long chain, producing a liquid form of the hydrogen fuel for transport and possibly even for burning as is… The energy density would be much higher then in H2, and no new technology is needed to transport and use it as a fuel. I am willing to bet you could use various forms of this compact hydrogen fuel as feeder chemicals into making other useful products.
I know, just another pie-in-the-sky idea, but still I hope someone considers it since it is so obviously an efficient way to get to this Hydrogen Economy.
Even better to convert it to methanol using heat and a catalyst.
3H2 + CO2 = CH3OH + H2O
Once you have methanol everything is easy. Gas stations could sell it. ICE cars could use it with some modification. Infrastructure and logistics would be the same. The only difference is methanol has half the energy density of gasoline, but a 40 gal plastic methanol tank costs maybe ten bucks more than a 20 gal gas tank.
Yeah! Totally Organic! the Greens should love it!
Hey guys, ixnay on the aterway aporvay. If they figure this out, steam will be declared a pollutant by the EPA and it will become illegal to boil water for your coffee or tea in the morning!
They woul need to liquify the hydrogen for transport, before converting it to 700 bar gas to be usable for automotive purposes. I do not see the cost of those elements in there. The cost of liquefaction, transportm, storage and transfer at filling stations is at least as high as the production cost, and what is keeping hydrogen out of the loop for any practical purposes.
When you add in the safety issues, and they are very real, there basically is no case for the hydrogen economy.
I like the idea of using Hydrogen as a fuel.
Hope it works so when we start using up oil, we’ll have a backup to switch to.
Me too. I don’t believe fossil fuels are dangerous to health, even in highly polluted cities, but they can cause wars when supplies dwindle. Hydrogen is the future. You can produce it inside your national borders, so no need for oil tankers traversing politically unstable regions. It’s clean so pollution goes away. We have plenty of fossil fuels for now, so no need to rush with stupid regulations. Let’s take our time and get it right.
Okay, the fuel is pollution free, but what about the byproduct from the process of extracting the fuel?
The oil industry has experimented with oxygen injection and downhole combustion going back at least 40 years….Yes you can make syngas that way….No, it’s not an economically sound way to do it….think fixing your house furnace while its in a small diameter hole a mile under your house…..
I’m optimistic that human innovation will find a niche for using hydrogen to supply some energy…
Any SOUND technical solution to “CO2 pollution” (like proven Nuclear Energy) will be “fought to the finish line” by the Climate Crisis crowd.
They don’t want to actually fix the CO2 “problem”, they want to control the world. “Collateral damage” in the execution of their plans….like economic devastation, worldwide poverty, and a few hundreds of millions of fatalities is totally acceptable.
The problem will be stupid government interference in the long process of making the changeover. The CO2 cultists are looking dumber by the day.
By “pollution” do they mean carbon dioxide?
Yes, but letting CO2 get below 400 ppm may not be a good idea, either, considering impacts on the food supply. May have to start burning the excess biomass.
Not sure what pressure is attainable, but Germans used cow intestines to store the hydrogen used to make Zeppelins buoyant.
“[German Zeppelin builders] worked out that by making the skins [cow intestines] wet, stretching them, and allowing them to dry again, they were bonded together to form ideal vessels for hydrogen gas”
… “it took the guts from more than 250,000 cows to make a single airship.”
What could go wrong – Inserting O2 in a high carbon environment under pressure…
Am I missing something?
Things should not be used beyond their practical limits such as wind mills, great for pumping water before rural electrification. As for me I would not have wanted to be on the Hindenburg’s last trip, as great as the air ship was. Nor would I want my car loaded with hydrogen.
Dying to save the world that does not need saving is not a way to go.
Three cheers for separating hydrogen, now find a use for it. There must be a use for pure hydrogen or it would not exist.
Burn it as close to an on-site location as soon as soon as it is piped in, in a CCGT type electrical generation plant. A large bitumen field will generate hydrogen for several decades to come. No need to compress/pipe it to cities for an hydrogen economy for cars since that industry may not be the future. Don’t handle it any further than straight to electricity, as it is a good hot burning fuel source and doesn’t matter if the energy density is low since it isn’t being further processed. Send the electrons to more distant markets and market them as carbon free so as the cap on oil sand development is lifted.
If this makes money by the private sector without subsidy, and has minimal environmental ramifications, then there is no reason anyone could realistically oppose this. I think the writing is on the wall that some type of effort will be required by society in general to lower CO2 emissions over time, as we see here in the West. Fighting that battle by just saying more CO2 is better for the biosphere will lose that argument, even though it may be a true statement. I have no special insight in whether this specific process will be successful, butI think scientific R&D into advanced solutions will have a good pay back. I am an advocate of a technological solution, rather than just cutting back our overall consumption. That is a non starter, and especially for the third world who deserve everything we have gained in the West.
Like sea-level rise, sea-ice, giant pinwheels and solar panels, hydrogen-for-fuel is a big yawn. Watching the old test patterns on overnight TV was more interesting.
We’ll wake you when it’s over.
I’ve got an open mind on this process, but there are still many unanswered questions. If they are injecting pure oxygen, then some energy must be used to separate the oxygen from nitrogen in the air. Why are they using oxygen (a much larger molecule than hydrogen) to extract hydrogen? Hydrogen does not spontaneously combust in air at ambient temperatures and pressures, but would there be a danger of explosive reaction in a pure-oxygen atmosphere under pressure underground, especially if there are hydrocarbons present? Would we be risking a man-made earthquake to let off a little steam? Would they be better off injecting compressed air or nitrogen in order to reduce the risk of explosion?
Even if hydrogen was extracted mixed with oxygen, air, or nitrogen, hydrogen can be easily separated from other gases using the well-known process of pressure-swing adsorption to greater than 99% purity, so that it may be safer to inject other gases such as air or nitrogen, even if some of the injected gases rise to the surface.
If the goal is to extract hydrogen from formations containing petroleum, most of these formations also contain methane (natural gas). While hydrogen has a heat of combustion about 2.5 times higher than methane on a mass basis, on a volume basis (at the same temperature and pressure), the heat of combustion of methane is about 3.2 times higher than that of hydrogen, meaning that the storage tank on a methane-powered vehicle would be 3.2 times smaller than that of a hydrogen-powered vehicle, or the storage tank could operate at about 1/3 of the pressure of a hydrogen-powered vehicle. The storage tank for hydrogen would have to be very thick (and heavy) to resist the high pressure, and prevent the tiny hydrogen molecules from leaking. Why not extract both the hydrogen and the methane, and use both of them for fuel?
Hydrogen is also required in petroleum refining (for removing sulfur from distillates), and can be generated by reacting natural gas with steam (catalytic steam-methane reforming), where one volume of natural gas and two volumes of steam produce four volumes of hydrogen and one volume of CO2. This process does consume energy, so that if the goal is to produce energy (as in moving a vehicle), it is cheaper to burn methane directly than to convert it to hydrogen, for the same CO2 emissions.
The hydrogen-producing process described in the article may have some usefulness, but we need to see some results of experimental tests, including costs and yields, before jumping on this bandwagon. There may be some devils in the details.
With 10cm of white global warming covering the ground and ambient temps -15degC outside (normal here +15degC this time of year), I’m nice and cozy in the house warmed by a boiler system using wood burned in a furnace initially under hypoxic conditions to produce wood gas (mostly H2 & CH4), then exposed to O2 for complete oxidation to CO2 & H2O– same sort of system used to power French taxis during WWII and apparently this proposed new system on a geologic scale. ….What do these engineering genii intend to do with the CH4 they’re bound to generate? Or does it get so hot it doesn’t produce CH4?..Then why doesn’t it just burn to H2O in situ, given the presence of O2 & heat?
Seems like a good way to produce Ammonia. Ammonia is created from hydrogen and nitrogen, where the nitrogen comes from the air and the hydrogen usually comes from natural gas. If we produce the hydrogen this way there would be more methane for other purposes. Ammonia has a large existing market as well.
Just another attempt to raid government coffers. In-situ combustion/upgrading technologies for bitumen and coal have been failing for decades. Not clear who the previous site owners were but I suspect it was the site of a failed in-situ bitumen upgrading technology. Painting the horse a different colour won’t get it past the post. good luck trying to corral hydrogen downhole.
At one time Ian Gates was trying to raise research dollars to de-carbonize natural gas!!! Duh, its called steam methane reforming and is rather well understood
What has happened to our education systems?
Complete junk.
Yeah, bind up all of our oxygen, oxidized deep underground. Who needs an oxygen cycle? The important thing is to worry about carbon.
The important thing is to worry about gold.
Other Peoples’ Gold.
Auto
Whoopee. We’re saved.
I am waiting for the perpetual motion machine.