4 ms·

The Albanian mine: "The researchers found that the gas bubbling from the pool was more than 80 per cent hydrogen, with methane and a small amount of nitrogen m

The Albanian mine: "The researchers found that the gas bubbling from the pool was more than 80 per cent hydrogen, with methane and a small amount of nitrogen mixed in. It was flowing at a rate of 11 tonnes per year, almost an order of magnitude greater than any other flows of hydrogen gas measured from single-point sources elsewhere on Earth’s surface. To determine the source of the gas, the researchers also modelled different geological scenarios that could produce such a flow. They found the most likely scenario was that the gas was coming from a deeper reservoir of hydrogen accumulated in a fault beneath the mine. Based on the geometry of the fault, they estimate this reservoir contains at least 5000 to 50,000 tonnes of hydrogen. “It’s one of the largest volumes of natural hydrogen that has ever been measured,” says Eric Gaucher, an independent geochemist focused on natural hydrogen. But it still isn’t a huge amount, says Geoffrey Ellis at the US Geological Survey." This is the second or third time someone found modest amounts of hydrogen underground, and then started making claims of vast quantities being available. There's been so much well-drilling worldwide for other materials that if hydrogen was anywhere near the surface, it would have been found by now. The "gold hydrogen" enthusiasts claim well depths of a few kilometers are enough. Oil and natural gas wells routinely go that deep. So far, nobody has a "natural hydrogen" well producing. Even though this startup [1] said they would have one by the end of 2024. Their "news" releases are all about going to meetings, making deals, and such. Not much mention of drilling, unlike the statements they made a few years ago. There's one well in Mali which yields enough hydrogen to run an auto engine driving a generator. That's it for actual output. That deposit been known since the late 1980s, and invested in since 2012. Exploratory wells were drilled in 2018. Results from that are, somehow, hazy.[2] Not finding followups since 2018. The hype is strong here.[3] [1] https://helios-aragon.com/news/ https://helios-aragon.com/news/ [2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0360319918327861 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03603... [3] https://www.scopus.com/record/display.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85186957751 https://www.scopus.com/record/display.uri?eid=2-s2.0-8518695...

roenxi 2y ago
> There's been so much well-drilling worldwide for other materials that if hydrogen was anywhere near the surface, it would have been found by now. I'd believe it because geologists are thorough. I'd also not be that shocked if nobody was testing for hydrogen because it is a gas. I'd imagine it is possible to drill through a hydrogen deposit and not even notice it is there. Are we sure that the prospectors were checking for hydrogen? All over the globe? I suppose if they found a real lode of the stuff it might accidentally blow up the drilling crew. That'd make headlines.
- defrost 2y ago
  > Are we sure that the prospectors were checking for hydrogen? All over the globe? Yep .. checking for everything really - the costs for drilling bore samples are high enough that it's commonplace to log bores to have the data to store or onsell even if specific targets aren't found. The major explorers have petabytes of surface chemisty, seismic, EM, borehole samples and logs, radiometrics, magnetics, gravity, etc. in primary archives scattered across the globe and routinely digitised and merged into private reserve estimations. There are many drill hole logging and interp software packages kicking about, eg: https://www.csiro.au/en/work-with-us/industries/mining-resources/exploration/data-mosaic https://www.csiro.au/en/work-with-us/industries/mining-resou...
  - roenxi 2y ago
    Yeah I've sat on an exploration drill rig and I have a vague grasp of the physics and chemistry. That is why I'm a little sceptical - what exactly would the process be for identifying a hydrogen resource? We're dealing with a light gas that would probably escape from core samples very quickly; especially under normal conditions. They'd need to get an accurate read during core drilling or be able to identify specific a non-magnetic gas with density of 0 underground which sounds pretty challenging - especially since it seems to have no special commercial interest for most of history. Is there a standard that you have to have a gas monitor attached to the drill hole? I don't remember anyone pointing one out to me or complaining that theirs was broken but stranger things have happened. Can hydrogen even be detected with magnets or surface chemistry analysis? The way sound waves bounce around underground makes it quite challenging to pick things up. The geologists have put a lot of effort into this exact problem but prospecting for hydrogen sounds damn difficult and I'd be surprised if we had global coverage for it.
    - defrost 2y ago
      In the drill core, even after gas escapes, there'd be specific types of capping material that can trap hydrogen under pressure, below that there'd be a reduced density of more porous material. Hydrogen prospectors looking backwards at drill core logs would be looking for signature transitions and retesting fields, looking again at the seismic results to find ROI's in historic results. Hence: Geological signatures: https://academic.oup.com/jge/article/21/4/1242/7676857 https://academic.oup.com/jge/article/21/4/1242/7676857 Same authors, restricted access (for now): Geologic hydrogen: An emerging role of mining geophysics in new energy exploration - https://library.seg.org/doi/10.1190/image2024-4100417.1 https://library.seg.org/doi/10.1190/image2024-4100417.1 Old people rambling: Des FitzGerald on geophysical exploration for naturally occurring hydrogen. Des outlines the current state of exploration for natural hydrogen and discusses geological mechanisms for hydrogen generation. ~ https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14432471.2024.2438985 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14432471.2024.2... etc.
throwaway519 2y ago
We don't discover gold or diamond mines when drilling for oil but that's not to suggest we don't believe they don't exist. The number of holes made to get oil out is quite small in comparison to the surface area of the globe.
- defrost 2y ago
  The number of holes made to probe the dimensions of oil and gas fields greatly exceeds the number of holes made to get oil out .. and the number of holes drilled to estimate mineral reserves (copper, gold, kimberlite (diamonds), bauxite, etc. etc. etc) is large in comparision to oil wells. The point of all those holes is to log layers, horizons, sediments, etc and to map out the geology of very large areas .. much much much larger than the combined bore hole diameter areas. Of course boreholes are the final step in "proofing" siesmic results that map out many layers across large areas and allow geologists to rule out many areas as not having the structures required to trap gases.
Hilift 2y ago
Global production of hydrogen is about 75 million tons, about half from ammonia, half from capture during petroleum products (refining). That's a problem primarily due to it is plateaued and there isn't capability to increase supply unless someone makes ammonia crackers more efficient. The other major obstacle is natural gas has been artificially inexpensive due to the abundance of supply due to fracking. It's hard to compete with it. It's possible to build turbines that burn ammonia, but no-one wants it. https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/global-demand-for-pure-hydrogen-1975-2018 https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/global-demand... https://www.irena.org/Energy-Transition/Technology/Hydrogen https://www.irena.org/Energy-Transition/Technology/Hydrogen https://www.crystec.com/kllhyame.htm https://www.crystec.com/kllhyame.htm
- ianburrell 2y ago
  Hydrogen is used to produce ammonia, not the other way around. There is no natural source of ammonia. The first link is all about the use of hydrogen. The third is about ammonia cracker which may be useful to transport ammonia and turn back into hydrogen. Most hydrogen is produced by steam reforming methane, called gray hydrogen.
mnky9800n 2y ago
I think what’s even worse is this paper is not connected to any kind of reality. They just make up some data from their computational imaginations and clicked submit. In places where we do have observations we don’t see much gas coming out. For example, this paper I wrote a couple years ago that’s from a suggested hydrogen source site in Oman: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2022GL100395 https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/202...

roenxi 2y ago

> There's been so much well-drilling worldwide for other materials that if hydrogen was anywhere near the surface, it would have been found by now. I'd believe it because geologists are thorough. I'd also not be that shocked if nobody was testing for hydrogen because it is a gas. I'd imagine it is possible to drill through a hydrogen deposit and not even notice it is there. Are we sure that the prospectors were checking for hydrogen? All over the globe? I suppose if they found a real lode of the stuff it might accidentally blow up the drilling crew. That'd make headlines.

defrost 2y ago
> Are we sure that the prospectors were checking for hydrogen? All over the globe? Yep .. checking for everything really - the costs for drilling bore samples are high enough that it's commonplace to log bores to have the data to store or onsell even if specific targets aren't found. The major explorers have petabytes of surface chemisty, seismic, EM, borehole samples and logs, radiometrics, magnetics, gravity, etc. in primary archives scattered across the globe and routinely digitised and merged into private reserve estimations. There are many drill hole logging and interp software packages kicking about, eg: https://www.csiro.au/en/work-with-us/industries/mining-resources/exploration/data-mosaic https://www.csiro.au/en/work-with-us/industries/mining-resou...
- roenxi 2y ago
  Yeah I've sat on an exploration drill rig and I have a vague grasp of the physics and chemistry. That is why I'm a little sceptical - what exactly would the process be for identifying a hydrogen resource? We're dealing with a light gas that would probably escape from core samples very quickly; especially under normal conditions. They'd need to get an accurate read during core drilling or be able to identify specific a non-magnetic gas with density of 0 underground which sounds pretty challenging - especially since it seems to have no special commercial interest for most of history. Is there a standard that you have to have a gas monitor attached to the drill hole? I don't remember anyone pointing one out to me or complaining that theirs was broken but stranger things have happened. Can hydrogen even be detected with magnets or surface chemistry analysis? The way sound waves bounce around underground makes it quite challenging to pick things up. The geologists have put a lot of effort into this exact problem but prospecting for hydrogen sounds damn difficult and I'd be surprised if we had global coverage for it.
  - defrost 2y ago
    In the drill core, even after gas escapes, there'd be specific types of capping material that can trap hydrogen under pressure, below that there'd be a reduced density of more porous material. Hydrogen prospectors looking backwards at drill core logs would be looking for signature transitions and retesting fields, looking again at the seismic results to find ROI's in historic results. Hence: Geological signatures: https://academic.oup.com/jge/article/21/4/1242/7676857 https://academic.oup.com/jge/article/21/4/1242/7676857 Same authors, restricted access (for now): Geologic hydrogen: An emerging role of mining geophysics in new energy exploration - https://library.seg.org/doi/10.1190/image2024-4100417.1 https://library.seg.org/doi/10.1190/image2024-4100417.1 Old people rambling: Des FitzGerald on geophysical exploration for naturally occurring hydrogen. Des outlines the current state of exploration for natural hydrogen and discusses geological mechanisms for hydrogen generation. ~ https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14432471.2024.2438985 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14432471.2024.2... etc.

throwaway519 2y ago

We don't discover gold or diamond mines when drilling for oil but that's not to suggest we don't believe they don't exist. The number of holes made to get oil out is quite small in comparison to the surface area of the globe.

defrost 2y ago
The number of holes made to probe the dimensions of oil and gas fields greatly exceeds the number of holes made to get oil out .. and the number of holes drilled to estimate mineral reserves (copper, gold, kimberlite (diamonds), bauxite, etc. etc. etc) is large in comparision to oil wells. The point of all those holes is to log layers, horizons, sediments, etc and to map out the geology of very large areas .. much much much larger than the combined bore hole diameter areas. Of course boreholes are the final step in "proofing" siesmic results that map out many layers across large areas and allow geologists to rule out many areas as not having the structures required to trap gases.

Hilift 2y ago

Global production of hydrogen is about 75 million tons, about half from ammonia, half from capture during petroleum products (refining). That's a problem primarily due to it is plateaued and there isn't capability to increase supply unless someone makes ammonia crackers more efficient. The other major obstacle is natural gas has been artificially inexpensive due to the abundance of supply due to fracking. It's hard to compete with it. It's possible to build turbines that burn ammonia, but no-one wants it. https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/global-demand-for-pure-hydrogen-1975-2018 https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/global-demand... https://www.irena.org/Energy-Transition/Technology/Hydrogen https://www.irena.org/Energy-Transition/Technology/Hydrogen https://www.crystec.com/kllhyame.htm https://www.crystec.com/kllhyame.htm

ianburrell 2y ago
Hydrogen is used to produce ammonia, not the other way around. There is no natural source of ammonia. The first link is all about the use of hydrogen. The third is about ammonia cracker which may be useful to transport ammonia and turn back into hydrogen. Most hydrogen is produced by steam reforming methane, called gray hydrogen.

mnky9800n 2y ago

I think what’s even worse is this paper is not connected to any kind of reality. They just make up some data from their computational imaginations and clicked submit. In places where we do have observations we don’t see much gas coming out. For example, this paper I wrote a couple years ago that’s from a suggested hydrogen source site in Oman: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2022GL100395 https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/202...