Essay by Eric Worrall
h/t David S. – If you have never heard of natural hydrogen deposits before, you’re not alone. But discoveries of substantial underground gas fields which mostly contain almost pure hydrogen have the potential to completely upend efforts to develop a “green hydrogen” economy.
Natural hydrogen exploration ‘boom’ snaps up one third of South Australia
South Australia has found itself at the heart of a 21st-century gold rush, though this time for naturally occurring hydrogen. Since February 2021, 18 exploration licenses have been granted or applied for in the state by six different companies searching for natural hydrogen.
FEBRUARY 2, 2022 BELLA PEACOCK
In a rapid escalation from zero activity in February last year, exploration companies are now scrambling to look for what they believe could be the cheapest, easiest way to get their hands on the much hyped “future fuel”: hydrogen.
In the last 12 months, six different companies have either been granted or applied for 18 Petroleum Exploration Licences across the state of South Australia, according to Australian energy consultancy EnergyQuest. Combined, the area under permit equates to around 570,000 square kilometres (km2) or 32% of the entire state, the consultancy has found, referring to the sudden influx as a “boom”.
Natural hydrogen
Until now, natural or native hydrogen has been largely overlooked – despite it being described as “widespread in nature” by natural hydrogen researcher Viacheslav Zgonnik in a 2020 paper. Natural hydrogen deposits form through chemical reactions underground, with Zgonnik saying the molecule has been detected at high concentrations, often as the major gas, in all types of geologic environments.
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Read more: https://www.pv-magazine.com/2022/02/02/natural-hydrogen-exploration-boom-snaps-up-one-third-of-south-australia/
The abstract of the 2020 paper;
The occurrence and geoscience of natural hydrogen: A comprehensive review
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.earscirev.2020.103140
Abstract
Using an interdisciplinary approach, this paper reviews current knowledge in the field of natural hydrogen. For the first time, it combines perspectives on hydrogen from the literature of the former Eastern bloc with that of the West, including rare hardcopies and recent studies. Data are summarized and classified in three main sections: hydrogen as a free gas in different environments, as inclusions in various rock types, and as dissolved gas in ground water. This review conclusively demonstrates that molecular hydrogen is much more widespread in nature than was previously thought. Hydrogen has been detected at high concentrations, often as the major gas, in all types of geologic environment. A critical evaluation of all the proposed mechanisms regarding the origin of natural hydrogen shows that a deep-seated origin is potentially the most likely explanation for its abundance in nature. By combining available data, an estimate of 23 Tg/year for the total annual flow of hydrogen from geologic sources is proposed. This value is an order of magnitude greater than previous estimate but most likely still not large enough to account for recently discovered worldwide diffusive seepages. Hydrogen could play a critical role in mechanisms taking place in both the shallow and deep geospheres and it can influence a very wide range of natural phenomena. Hydrogen is an essential energy source for many microorganisms. Sampling for hydrogen can be a useful tool in studying natural environments, geologic mapping, monitoring of earthquakes, plotting fault traces and resource exploration. Hydrogen of geologic origin has the potential to become the renewable energy source of the future, with exploratory projects ongoing at the present time. The topic of natural hydrogen is therefore relevant from many different perspectives.
Read more: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0012825219304787#preview-section-abstract
Another paper which discusses natural hydrogen;
Natural hydrogen the fuel of the 21st century
Laurent Truche1* and Elena F. Bazarkina2,3
1 Université Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, ISTerre, F-38000 Grenoble, France
2 Institut Néel, UPR 2940 CNRS – Université Grenoble Alpes, F-38000 Grenoble, France
3 IGEM RAS, 119017 Moscow, RussiaCorresponding author: laurent.truche@univ-grenoble-alpes.fr
Abstract
Much has been learned about natural hydrogen (H2) seepages and accumulation, but present knowledge of hydrogen behavior in the crust is so limited that it is not yet possible to consider exploitation of this resources. Hydrogen targeting requires a shift in the long-standing paradigms that drive oil and gas exploration. This paper describes the foundation of an integrated source-to-sink view of the hydrogen cycle, and propose preliminary practical guidelines for hydrogen exploration.
Read more: https://www.e3s-conferences.org/articles/e3sconf/abs/2019/24/e3sconf_wri-162018_03006/e3sconf_wri-162018_03006.html
This story is from February, but until David pointed it out, I had never heard of natural hydrogen, other than as an impurity in natural gas.
A word of caution, information about natural hydrogen is pretty sparse, so I have no validation of the claim natural hydrogen occurs in sufficient quantity in exploitable deposits, other than a handful of papers. It may prove to be the cold fusion of the zero carbon industry. But serious people seem to be taking it seriously.
Even the possibility of significant exploitable natural deposits of hydrogen poses a threat to attempts to build a renewable powered green hydrogen economy.
How will anyone obtain financing for spending billions installing solar panels and wind turbines, developing green water hydrolysis technology, if someone can potentially just poke a hole in the ground and obliterate their profit margin?
I still think hydrogen is way too dangerous to be used in consumer items like hydrogen powered automobiles.
But a zero carbon dispatchable hydrogen powered electricity turbine sitting on top of a large natural hydrogen deposit could pretty much wipe out the profitability of any wind or solar installation or battery backup facility, no matter how many subsidies the government hands out.
Even if the natural hydrogen deposits only last a decade or two, or are never developed into a commercial resource, the threat of businesses developing dispatchable natural hydrogen resources will undermine the business case of pretty much every other form of green energy, except hydroelectricity.
Update: h/t Nick Stokes – a CSIRO paper Hydrogen in Australian natural gas: occurrences, sources and resources suggests “The prediction and subsequent identification of subsurface H2 that can be exploited remains enigmatic and awaits robust exploration guidelines and targeted drilling for proof of concept.”
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H2 is a very tiny molecule, and as mentioned by others here can embrittle metals, etc. Can the usual capstone rock formations that contain oil and natural gas deposits effectively retain H2? A relatively easy experiment to do, tho I’m guessing the permeability of H2 in shale etc is known.
There are possibly reactions which could result in hydrogen as by-product. For instance corrosion of elemental metals like iron in the presence of groundwater or possibly decomposition of water at high temperatures. Deposits of free hydrogen in anything other than trace amounts, and under common conditions, are not very likely. Remember folks, the natural resources industry has always been full of dreamers and promoters who can make absurdities sound like solid investments — i’ve examined patents of such.
Hmmmmm……if and maybe and maybe sort-of…..it seems unlikely that with all the drilling that has been done that no one has been blown up by tapping into a natural hydrogen underground pool in the last 100 years.
If you are an investor, my natural skepticism urges caution….
We did not get blown up when were drilling in York Nebraska in 2019!
Ed ==> Did you find hydrogen? Lots of it?
Thanks for a fascinating article and dynamic discussions. WUWT is superb resource for people who are curious about the natural world and how it “works”.
We are already producing natural hydrogen near York Nebraska. I was the drilling fluids engineer on that discovery well in 2018-2019. State record depth of 11250′ or so. The company name is Natural Hydrogen Energy. FOI. Almost 8000′ of granite drilled.
Ed,
Drilling 8000′ of granite is an impressive achievement.
Have you considered looking into this technology?
Why This Fusion Tech May Be a Geothermal Energy Breakthrough
Find all the naturally-occurring gaseous hydrogen that you want . . . then what?
How are you going to move it from the production well site to a refining/processing site and then distribute it for commercial use?
Construct a new high-pressure gas pipeline grid across Australia using only metals that are known to be insensitive to hydrogen embrittlement? Ka-ching!
Construct massive industrial-size plants to liquify hydrogen so that it can be transported and used as a more dense, but cryogenic, fluid? Ka-ching! Ka-ching!
There are three fundamental, unavoidable problems with using hydrogen as a widespread, commercial fuel:
1) Hydrogen is both extremely flammable and easily ignitable within earth’s atmosphere.
2) Mechanically sealing high pressure tanks and distribution piping against leaks is difficult due to the very low molecular weight (= small molecular diameter) of the hydrogen molecule.
3) Hydrogen (even liquified hydrogen) is ill-positioned as a replacement for other fossil fuels, especially in mobile vehicle use, due to its very low energy-density, measured on a volumetric basis:
— MJ/liter = ~3 for GH2 at 350 bar (5000 psi) . . . ~8 for LH2 . . . ~23 for liquid propane . . . ~32 for gasoline . . .~37 for diesel
(see attached graph from https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/hydrogen-storage )
Magically solve all three problems and then one might consider naturally-occurring hydrogen as a practical fuel source at industrial scale.
You know the green Marxists are going to hate this because you have to drill for it.
The Warmunists will be fervently opposed to this for two reasons.
The article (abstract) lists a potential flow rate of 23 Tg/yr of hydrogen. If a teragram is 10^12 g = 10^9 kg, this comes out to about 50 billion pounds per year. The heat of combustion of hydrogen is about 50,000 Btu/lb, so burning this would yield about 2.5 quadrillion Btu (quads) of heat per year.
As a comparison, the world currently uses about 132 trillion standard cubic feet per year of natural gas, with a heat of combustion of about 900 Btu/scf, for a total heat yield of about 119 quads per year.
This means that using “natural hydrogen” as a fuel could displace about 2.1% of the current consumption of natural gas, with zero carbon emissions. It’s not a game-changer, but exploiting any concentrated areas of “natural hydrogen” may be cheaper than trying to produce hydrogen from natural gas.
The major problem with using hydrogen as a fuel is its extremely low density (on a volume basis, the heat of combustion of hydrogen is only about 31% of that of natural gas), although that problem can be resolved by adsorbing hydrogen onto solid material to concentrate it, then using heat to desorb it when it is used as fuel.
Hydrogen is also used in petroleum refineries to remove sulfur from petroleum distillates, and is normally produced by steam-reforming of natural gas. If a major source of “natural hydrogen” is found near an oil refinery, it could be transported to the refinery by pipeline, and eliminate the expense of steam-reforming.
There is an informative page here from the SA government. They summarise the past H₂ indications in the state. Apparently the reason for the rush of exploration licences is that just last year SA amended its regulations to include H₂ in the list of things you could get a licence to explore for.
Interesting. What would be the chemical reactions for hydrogen seeping into atmosphere or oceans? Is it significant enough to change climate or pH studies?
The mind wanders and wonders.
In their efforts to develop commercial Helium deposits in Arizona, Desert Mountain Energy asserts that they have found commercial quantities of Hydrogen in some of their wells. They have set up a joint venture to explore commercial potential.
makes no difference, similar to solar the economics doesn’t work even if the hydrogen is free (opex)
this is why the US has 190K miles of oil pipeline, 350K natural gas, and 1.6K hydrogen
biofuel and nuclear will always be cheaper and better than hydrogen
well, until the reglaciation anyway, but that’s probably a couple hundred years at least