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Limitless white hydrogen under our feet may soon shatter all energy assumptions

18 points by vanburen 3y ago

vanburen 3y ago
Non pay-walled link: https://archive.ph/3c7Hs https://archive.ph/3c7Hs
defrost 3y ago
The gushing Telegraph article is mainly riffing off of earlier work and the recent April 2023 USGS featured story. Hydrogen found in Earth's crust is 'limitless fuel supply' ( we just need to drill nearly twice as deep as we've ever drilled before ) Telegraph 2002: https://archive.li/RbQwv https://archive.li/RbQwv The Potential for Geologic Hydrogen for Next-Generation Energy “Using a conservative range of input values, the model predicts a mean volume of hydrogen that could supply the projected global hydrogen demand for thousands of years,” Ellis said. However, he quickly cautions, “We have to be very careful in interpreting this number, though. Based on what we know about the distribution of petroleum and other gases in the subsurface, most of this hydrogen is probably inaccessible." USGS April 2023: https://www.usgs.gov/news/featured-story/potential-geologic-hydrogen-next-generation-energy https://www.usgs.gov/news/featured-story/potential-geologic-... The context for the sudden resurgence in interest can likely be traced back to an Australian energy kite looking to raise capital with no solid technical reports yet: https://www.goldhydrogen.com.au/updates/natural-hydrogen-find-in-france/ https://www.goldhydrogen.com.au/updates/natural-hydrogen-fin... https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy-environment/news/excitement-grows-about-natural-hydrogen-as-huge-reserves-found-in-france/ https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy-environment/news/exc... https://www.goldhydrogen.com.au/updates/gold-hydrogen-may-shatter-all-energy-assumptions/ https://www.goldhydrogen.com.au/updates/gold-hydrogen-may-sh...
aaron695 3y ago
[dead]
peepeepoopoo23 3y ago
Plants can at least convert CO2 combustion products back into carbon compounds and molecular oxygen, but what chemical pathway exists to free up the oxygen consumed by burning subsurface hydrogen in our atmosphere? Wouldn't this deplete the atmosphere of oxygen relatively quickly, and in a way that's not easy to reverse?
- MrYellowP 3y ago
  > Wouldn't this deplete the atmosphere of oxygen relatively quickly, and in a way that's not easy to reverse? Then that brings rise to an industry producing and selling breathable air! Think of all the jobs this would create and how it would boom the economy! It would also end all crime, because the government simply could forbid selling breathable air to criminals. Think of the amount of money we all could save without prisons existing!
- 7e 3y ago
  Photosynthesis produces oxygen from water. Burning hydrogen creates water. So, plants are the answer.
  - adhesive_wombat 3y ago
    Exactly, as long as there's CO2 to use (the inputs to photosynthesis are 6H2O + 6CO2). With atmospheric CO2 now over double the pre-industrial concentrations, there's plenty of that! And water would only be more available, by a tiny fraction, with lots of hydrogen burning. Oxygen is highly reactive so there's a replenishment mechanism at play to maintain the 21% we know and love in the atmosphere. Of course, if the phytoplankton give up the ghost that will end poorly for anything that likes to respire, but that's a completely different problem and would be as much of an existential issue with or without "white hydrogen" energy. In terms of scale, you'd have to burn around 1 trillion tonnes of hydrogen to bind 1% of the atmospheric oxygen into water (i.e. reducing the concentration from 21% to 20.79%: the same effect in terms of oxygen partial pressure as being 85m above sea level). This releases 40 billion GWh of energy, or as much energy as humans use, from all sources combined, in 225 years at present rates.
- 3y ago
boboche 3y ago
The telegraph shattered my spam-paywall-popup-ads everywhere-ragequit limit to a point where I genuinely wonder if they actually manage to convert traffic with such agressive tactics?
- gardenfelder 3y ago
  ReaderView in Firefox or use Brave
FooBarBizBazz 3y ago
Can we stop color-coding this colorless gas and instead use words that at least hint at what they mean? I know people like to talk about "white hydrogen" and "blue hydrogen", because the secret of the arbitrary assignment of colors to meanings feels like knowledge, but it isn't knowledge, so can we all just stop playing the stupid game? Who started this nonsense? It smells like it started at Davos. To save anyone the trouble, "white hydrogen" here means "geological hydrogen", i.e., hydrogen that for some reason can be found deep within the Earth, and that can be extracted by means of drilling and fracking. "Geological" is a totally reasonable adjective by which the noun "hydrogen" can be modified.

18 points by vanburen 3y ago

Non pay-walled link: https://archive.ph/3c7Hs https://archive.ph/3c7Hs

The gushing Telegraph article is mainly riffing off of earlier work and the recent April 2023 USGS featured story. Hydrogen found in Earth's crust is 'limitless fuel supply' ( we just need to drill nearly twice as deep as we've ever drilled before ) Telegraph 2002: https://archive.li/RbQwv https://archive.li/RbQwv The Potential for Geologic Hydrogen for Next-Generation Energy “Using a conservative range of input values, the model predicts a mean volume of hydrogen that could supply the projected global hydrogen demand for thousands of years,” Ellis said. However, he quickly cautions, “We have to be very careful in interpreting this number, though. Based on what we know about the distribution of petroleum and other gases in the subsurface, most of this hydrogen is probably inaccessible." USGS April 2023: https://www.usgs.gov/news/featured-story/potential-geologic-hydrogen-next-generation-energy https://www.usgs.gov/news/featured-story/potential-geologic-... The context for the sudden resurgence in interest can likely be traced back to an Australian energy kite looking to raise capital with no solid technical reports yet: https://www.goldhydrogen.com.au/updates/natural-hydrogen-find-in-france/ https://www.goldhydrogen.com.au/updates/natural-hydrogen-fin... https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy-environment/news/excitement-grows-about-natural-hydrogen-as-huge-reserves-found-in-france/ https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy-environment/news/exc... https://www.goldhydrogen.com.au/updates/gold-hydrogen-may-shatter-all-energy-assumptions/ https://www.goldhydrogen.com.au/updates/gold-hydrogen-may-sh...

aaron695 3y ago

[dead]

peepeepoopoo23 3y ago

Plants can at least convert CO2 combustion products back into carbon compounds and molecular oxygen, but what chemical pathway exists to free up the oxygen consumed by burning subsurface hydrogen in our atmosphere? Wouldn't this deplete the atmosphere of oxygen relatively quickly, and in a way that's not easy to reverse?

MrYellowP 3y ago
> Wouldn't this deplete the atmosphere of oxygen relatively quickly, and in a way that's not easy to reverse? Then that brings rise to an industry producing and selling breathable air! Think of all the jobs this would create and how it would boom the economy! It would also end all crime, because the government simply could forbid selling breathable air to criminals. Think of the amount of money we all could save without prisons existing!
7e 3y ago
Photosynthesis produces oxygen from water. Burning hydrogen creates water. So, plants are the answer.
- adhesive_wombat 3y ago
  Exactly, as long as there's CO2 to use (the inputs to photosynthesis are 6H2O + 6CO2). With atmospheric CO2 now over double the pre-industrial concentrations, there's plenty of that! And water would only be more available, by a tiny fraction, with lots of hydrogen burning. Oxygen is highly reactive so there's a replenishment mechanism at play to maintain the 21% we know and love in the atmosphere. Of course, if the phytoplankton give up the ghost that will end poorly for anything that likes to respire, but that's a completely different problem and would be as much of an existential issue with or without "white hydrogen" energy. In terms of scale, you'd have to burn around 1 trillion tonnes of hydrogen to bind 1% of the atmospheric oxygen into water (i.e. reducing the concentration from 21% to 20.79%: the same effect in terms of oxygen partial pressure as being 85m above sea level). This releases 40 billion GWh of energy, or as much energy as humans use, from all sources combined, in 225 years at present rates.
3y ago

boboche 3y ago

The telegraph shattered my spam-paywall-popup-ads everywhere-ragequit limit to a point where I genuinely wonder if they actually manage to convert traffic with such agressive tactics?

gardenfelder 3y ago
ReaderView in Firefox or use Brave

FooBarBizBazz 3y ago

Can we stop color-coding this colorless gas and instead use words that at least hint at what they mean? I know people like to talk about "white hydrogen" and "blue hydrogen", because the secret of the arbitrary assignment of colors to meanings feels like knowledge, but it isn't knowledge, so can we all just stop playing the stupid game? Who started this nonsense? It smells like it started at Davos. To save anyone the trouble, "white hydrogen" here means "geological hydrogen", i.e., hydrogen that for some reason can be found deep within the Earth, and that can be extracted by means of drilling and fracking. "Geological" is a totally reasonable adjective by which the noun "hydrogen" can be modified.