Natural hydrogen detected in 'multiple locations' in South Australia

[Think. Again.]

First stage of soil gas testing has yielded promising results for Australian firm Gold Hydrogen ahead of initial drilling in October

25 July 2023 9:25 GMT Updated 25 July 2023 9:36 GMT
By Polly Martin

Full article: https://www.hydrogeninsight.com/production/natural-hydrogen-detected-in-multiple-locations-in-south-australia/2-1-1491111

ASX-listed company Gold Hydrogen has announced today (Tuesday) that naturally occurring hydrogen has been detected at the surface of “multiple locations” in PEL 687, an area in the state of South Australia which it has licensed for exploration.

Natural hydrogen, which can be formed in the earth’s subsurface through a variety of routes (see factbox below) is expected to be extremely cheap to recover, with estimated cost of production at a well in Mali below $0.50/kg.

-snip-

The company’s “best estimate” for hydrogen resource in PEL 687, calculated in September 2021, is 1.3 million tonnes of H2, although its low-case sits at around 207,000 tonnes. And it estimates a high case of 8.8 million tonnes of the zero-carbon gas in the block.

-snip-

See also:

Massive underground reservoir of natural hydrogen in Spain 'could deliver the cheapest H2 in the world'

Helios Aragón says it has access to giant resource of naturally occurring hydrogen in northern Spain but the country’s anti-oil rules are standing in its way

Full article: https://www.hydrogeninsight.com/innovation/massive-underground-reservoir-of-natural-hydrogen-in-spain-could-deliver-the-cheapest-h2-in-the-world/2-1-1431515

[bucolic_frolic]

1. Great! Do we know the consequences of unleashing x% more hydrogen in the atmosphere? /nt

[Think. Again.]

2. we know they are less than releasing more CO2!

[Hugh_Lebowski]

3. I sure hope it turns out there's an awful lot of these to be found and that they're much bigger

I asked Bard a couple questions to get a feel for the significance of this discovery:

Q: how much hydrogen would you need to produce 1 exajoule of electricity?

The energy content of 1 kilogram of hydrogen is 33.6 kWh. To produce 1 exajoule of electricity, which is equal to 10^18 joules, you would need 10^18 / 33.6 * 10^3 = 29,411,764 kilograms of hydrogen.

However, this is assuming that the hydrogen is used in a perfectly efficient fuel cell. In reality, there are losses in the production, storage, and transportation of hydrogen, so you would need more than 29 million metric tons of hydrogen to produce 1 exajoule of electricity.

The exact amount of hydrogen you would need would depend on the efficiency of the fuel cell and the other steps in the process. However, it is clear that a significant amount of hydrogen would be needed to produce 1 exajoule of electricity.

Q: how many exajoules of energy are consumed in the world per day?

The world consumes about 18 exajoules of energy per day. This is equivalent to about 580 million terajoules or 13865 million tons of oil equivalents. The majority of this energy is used for transportation, electricity generation, and industrial processes.

Here is a breakdown of global energy consumption by sector:

Transportation: 36%
Electricity generation: 26%
Industrial processes: 24%
Commercial and residential: 14%

The amount of energy consumed in the world is expected to continue to increase in the coming years, as the global population grows and economies develop. However, there is also a growing movement to reduce energy consumption and transition to renewable energy sources. This will be a major challenge in the years to come, but it is essential if we are to mitigate the effects of climate change.

Even with the upper estimate of 8.8M tons, you're looking at producing enough H2 to power the world as a whole for something like 20 minutes, and that's at 100% efficiency.

Just saying we're going to need an awful lot of these deposits, and at least some of them at much larger scales than this one if we're hoping for natural hydrogen to come to the planet's rescue.

[Think. Again.]

4. or...

...however much there is, is badly needed to keep moving away from fossil fuels as quickly as possible so let's stop doing math and start shutting down fossil fuels.

[Hugh_Lebowski]

6. Or ... you get the estimate of how much is actually there/can be recovered wrong

And you end up burning a bunch of carbon to build an infrastructure to 'actually do something' with this natural hydrogen ... and discover that the whole thing was a net-energy LOSER in the end.

You can't just wave off the mathematics and physics involved here mate.

It's not like this is a strike of magically carbon-free petroleum-like liquid that we can simply pour into our existing energy infrastructure and use equivalently, but not release any carbon.

The correct answer to the question of what infrastructure changes are logical to make (i.e. invest carbon-based fuel on developing/creating) depends a LOT on how much of this natural hydrogen there actually is.

And we have absolutely no freaking idea, in this AU spot, nor, more importantly, in the world.

Nor where it is in the world, which is also an important question.

It's not just a question of 'we know we have SOME amount of carbon-free fuel, therefore it makes sense to exploit it however possible'. Which is what your reply to me implies.

[Think. Again.]

7. The "We need to research!" approach...

...is not always the right approach when time is of the utmost importance.

If I'm zooming down the highway and suddenly see a child run in front of my car, I will not take the time figure out the perfect amount of pressure to apply to my brakes so that I sop before hitting the child but also don't unnecessarily put too much wear on my tires.

[Hugh_Lebowski]

10. Your analogy is wrong, I'm sorry

You can't just wave away physics.

If you end up with negative EROEI by exploiting an energy resource (burning mostly fossil fuels to build the infrastructure to make use of it) purely because it's there and carbon-free, humanity will come out behind in the end.

[Think. Again.]

12. you didn't subtract the amount of CO2 not released ...

...because you displaced the fossil fuels sooner.

[Hugh_Lebowski]

16. That's because that math is wrong in the context of the point I'm making

If we expend, say, 1 exajoule of carbon-based energy to build the infrastructure PURELY to allow us to exploit an energy supply that ultimately produces .5 exajoules of energy ... then we lost, and climate change is worse.

Esp. considering we will have largely used the carbon-based energy FIRST to accomplish this net-energy losing task.

We have NO IDEA how that math will work out at this stage of the game when it comes to 'natural hydrogen', and gambling is really not all that wise.

OTOH, we have a MUCH better idea how much uranium there is, where it is, and how to exploit it at a very high rate of efficiency e.g. EROEI.

Which is why you run into a lot of us here who are like ... lets go with what we know. And I'd also point out you can absolutely still make hydrogen using nuclear power, obviously ... if it turns out that makes sense to do

[Think. Again.]

17. as opposed to some other DUer's assumptions...

...I completely agree that must make the best (and safest) use that we can of nuclear energy to push along the path away from fossil fuels.

Nuclear energy holds huge potential to displace CO2 emitting energy sources.

Once we're safely on the other side we will have more time to then reduce and eliminate nuclear energy, find something to do with it's left over waste, and displace it with safer energy generating technology.

But our immediate focus, right now, must be on eliminating CO2 emissions as quickly as possible, using every tool in our box.

We can deal with the lesser emergency of radiation risks later.

[Hugh_Lebowski]

19. What I'm really getting at here is that it is not wise to assume there are going to turn out to be

Vast reservoirs of naturally-occurring hydrogen that we can exploit to provide for our energy needs, happily replacing carbon-based fuel sources, for much or all of the world.

We know of ONE source in Mali that's making life better for a small village, keeping their TV's turned on and such.

If it turns out there are these exploitable deposits, in HUGE volumes, and they produce a good EROEI? Then GREAT.

But let's not bank our future on it, cause we really don't know that much about what's out there, and counting on it could backfire in a major way, because you have to build the infrastructure, which costs us in carbon energy/emissions.

Fair enough?

[Brenda]

22. Sorry, won't make that mistake again. Good luck with that. nt

[Brenda]

11. Heh, amazing ain't it?

How hard some people try to diss hydrogen and pump up the nuclear. smdh

[Hugh_Lebowski]

21. It's pretty UNamazing once you recognize that uranium produces energy, and hydrogen wastes it

To be more specific, UNLESS (which remains a VERY huge 'if') it turns out there actually ARE vast deposits of exploitable natural hydrogen deposits, hydrogen doesn't produce energy in the net. It's something much more analogous to a battery. It's temporary storage, and a very energy-inefficient one at that. It's an energy sink.

It does, however, have some utility in the sense that it can be created in a way that's more environmentally friendly than (current) batteries. No lithium mining, etc. And H2 fuel cells have a higher energy density than batteries which make them a better choice for large vehicles like busses, trains, and probably eventually aircraft.

OTOH, uranium ... is actually properly described as a 'fuel source'. It can be leveraged to produce a reaction that produces energy in the net, rather than being a net LOSER like hydrogen (as currently produced).

So, when you talk about 'dissing hydrogen' and 'pumping nuclear' you are essentially comparing apples and oranges.

Again, UNLESS it turns out there's exploitable fields of natural Hydrogen. And there needs to be A LOT of them.

[honest.abe]

5. One thing to keep in mind is that unlike oil, natural hydrogen is being created continuously...

and can refill gas fields even as they are being tapped. In Mali they have been tapping a hydrogen gas field for producing electricity and apparently based on production and pressure monitoring, the gas field has seen no depletion to date.

https://hydrogen-central.com/first-kind-discovery-mali-vast-reservoirs-clean-hydrogen-gas/

[Think. Again.]

8. Yes! and...

I wonder if somehow we can harness, or replicate, the natural processes that continually creating that hydrogen?

[honest.abe]

28. I was thinking that too.

Hopefully there are researchers planning to look into this.

[Hugh_Lebowski]

9. We absolutely do not know that this is true everywhere it's being created

and CERTAINLY don't know that it will be replaced anywhere near as quickly as we'd need to be tapping it to make a dent our fossil fuel consumption.

This is a lot of wishful thinking.

[Think. Again.]

13. oh, research is wishful thinking now.

[Hugh_Lebowski]

18. Wishful thinking is believing things when you don't really have the comprehensive analysis needed

to back up your beliefs, simply because you're hoping they're true.

I entirely read one of the articles you posted the other day, very long, detailed and I thought pretty well done. It's this one:

https://www.science.org/content/article/hidden-hydrogen-earth-may-hold-vast-stores-renewable-carbon-free-fuel

If you read that article with a properly critical mindset, paying attention to how many times words like 'might, may be, it's hoped that, it could be that, theoretically' are deployed regarding this, that or the other (esp commercial viability) ... you'll realize ... we barely know shit when it comes to the POSSIBLY exploitable resource known as natural hydrogen.

If you, otoh, go into it with wishful thinking, you'll come out thinking something entirely different.

[Think. Again.]

23. Just to clarify...

I never said I "believed" anything.

This is I wrote:

"I wonder if somehow we can harness, or replicate, the natural processes that continually creating that hydrogen?"

[Hugh_Lebowski]

24. And you wrote that in a reply to the same post I responded to

And I didn't reply to that post of yours where you said that

[Think. Again.]

25. Yes....

...it's true natural hydrogen is a relatively new topic and because of that we don't yet know what we are dealing with.

But certain possibilities are becoming more clear quickly.

If natural hydrogen is occuring on the scale geologists are predicting (hesitantly, as they do), then certain realities can be taken for granted.

[Hugh_Lebowski]

29. I know you're the one you posted this Science article, but I'd love it if you re-read it

with scientific skepticism, rather than a hope that it confirms what you'd prefer to be the case.

Pay attention to how often the article expresses variations of words like could, potentially, may be, someone believes, etc.

This is about what is being done by gamblers who refuse to tell anyone 'when or how much'. One wildcatter is relying on data from one well (at 25% hydrogen), drilled in 1963, and another based on well data from the 1920's. Note also, there's seemingly ONE hydrogen well in the United States. No word on whether there's been a discovery of it there.

https://www.science.org/content/article/hidden-hydrogen-earth-may-hold-vast-stores-renewable-carbon-free-fuel

Even the ONE geologist quoted, Ellis, if you parse his words carefully, is REALLY not even remotely 'predicting' much of anything except that the earth produces a bunch of H2 gas, somewhere.

"At USGS, Ellis is working on answering that question. He thinks Earth produces orders of magnitude more hydrogen each year than the 90 million tons that humans manufacture. But it’s not only that flow that matters—it’s the size of the underground stock. “How much can be trapped in the subsurface that we can actually go after?” Ellis asks. “That’s a much more difficult question to answer.”

...snip...

Ellis is now using geophysical data to assess promising U.S. terrain for hydrogen generation. He says the United States likely sits on two rich veins. One is about 10 to 20 kilometers off the Eastern Seaboard, where iron-rich mantle rocks lie about 10 kilometers beneath the seabed.

... snip ...

Ellis acknowledges that much of this global resource could end up being too scattered to be captured economically, like the millions of tons of gold that are dissolved in the oceans at parts per trillion levels. But that worry hasn’t stopped the hydrogen hunters."

I think it's safe to say nobody has ever tried to drill 10KM deep into the seabed to harvest a GAS, let alone H2, just as one point to make about all this.

To characterize the situation as one that's even close to 'geologists are predicting' that natural hydrogen could be a notable solution to our energy problems would be disingenuous, if based primarily upon what's in this article ... which is mainly about what a few assorted individual gamblers across the globe are hoping might make them rich.

[Think. Again.]

30. I agree with you that...

...we are only just beginning to understand the possibility of the existance of substantial amounts of natural H2, and whether, if it exists, it could be viable as an energy source.

But yes, I am very excited about the possibility and so far the information we do have is promising.

I did post that article and others on the same topic.

Here are some more: (I tried to pick the most recent and avoided corporate press releases):

Excitement Grows About ‘Natural Hydrogen’ as Huge Reserves Found in France – Euractiv
https://hydrogen-central.com/excitement-grows-about-natural-hydrogen-huge-reserves-found-france-euractiv/

A previously overlooked, potential geologic source of energy could increase the renewability and lower the carbon footprint of our nation’s energy portfolio: natural hydrogen.
https://www.usgs.gov/news/featured-story/potential-geologic-hydrogen-next-generation-energy

A Gold Mine of Clean Energy May Be Hiding Under Our Feet
https://archive.is/NTDor

The earth might hold huge stores of natural hydrogen – and prospectors are already scouring South Australia for it
https://theconversation.com/the-earth-might-hold-huge-stores-of-natural-hydrogen-and-prospectors-are-already-scouring-south-australia-for-it-204904

Recent discoveries have unearthed a bonanza of natural hydrogen in significantly larger quantities than was previously thought possible.
https://www.advancedsciencenews.com/uncovering-hidden-reserves-of-natural-hydrogen/

[honest.abe]

27. It does seem to be true at least for that Mali well.

Here's an article discussing it in more detail...

In addition to having exceptionally high concentrations of hydrogen, the reservoir has not lost pressure over 7 years of production (1,300 m3/day). There are strong indications that this is due to constant replenishment of H2, making this a sustainable source. The mere presence of a H2 reservoir is an indication of very recent to real-time H2 production because hydrogen is so mobile and reactive that it is normally quickly converted to methane via biotic and abiotic processes anyway.

In a few wells, carbon monoxide at concentrations of >1000ppm was identified, another indication that active geochemical processes are ongoing. The exact source of the hydrogen in this region is still debated. Serpentinization of ultramafic rocks is one of the more likely possibilities, with isotopic signatures indicating that the H2 is formed in the basement and then probably channelled to its present reservoir via large scale faults seen in seismic lines.

https://geoexpro.com/the-natural-hydrogen-field-without-pressure-depletion/

For sure it needs to be further validated but if this is real and and other wells respond the same way it's a game changer.

[hatrack]

14. You're dealing with a substance with an atomic mass of 1 . . . .

So once those reservoirs are discovered, I'm sure the oil & gas industry will have all of the pipes and seals and valves and casings and tanks and pipelines and compressors that can handle the complexities of dealing with hydrogen standing by and ready to roll.

After all, they've done such a great job containing the side effects of oil & gas production and their collective plant and equipment hardly ever leak.

[Think. Again.]

15. yep...

...the bad actors of capitalism will always find a way to do major harm so they can collect trinkets.

But, really, that's a different conversation.

[hatrack]

20. Not a different conversation at all - who's going to drill, capture, ship, sell this putative H?

Oil and gas companies.

Do we have any reason to believe that their technical processes are up to this particular task?

No.

Do we have any reason to believe that their motivations would be any other than maximizing profit in the short-term by any means necessary (or at least legally survivable/deniable)?

No.

[Think. Again.]

26. I agree with you...

...on the dangers of irresponsible profiteers in any industry.