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> 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

by 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.
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    - roenxi 2y ago
      If they have to theorycraft a resource based on traces of where the hydrogen used to be, but no longer is then it is entirely possible that big hydrogen deposits have just been missed. That seems to be literally what the article today is about. For 90% of minerals they can just say what is in the drill sample is what is underground, exploration geologists aren't generally in the business of imagining what might have been in the core independently of what was directly measured. If we need to apply specific theories to the exploration samples then the "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" logic doesn't hold. Since the evidence has to be interpreted before we can know if there is a deposit it is quite possible that it was interpreted wrongly on a mass scale. You're linking to papers suggesting innovative novel methods for finding the stuff or talking about rechecking based on the latest theoretical understanding, suggesting we don't actually have a big historic archive to draw on. I'm not saying geologists are ignorant, just that Animats' logic doesn't hold for hydrogen. There could be massive deposits that we technically already have the data for except nobody ever bothered to look for it.
- scott7ree 2y ago
  As a prospector myself, this is false. Assays are expensive for traditional minerals and we never assay for hydrogen as that requires a totally different set of procedures.
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onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago
How often are people drilling for gold or something and accidentally stumble upon oil? I can't imagine this is a common occurrence, given how much effort people put into oil exploration...
- scott7ree 2y ago
  Often an explorer looking for gold finds something else like copper or nickel. Oil however is generally found in a different environment. H2 is created through serpentinization in areas more prone to mineral discovery.
scott7ree 2y ago
Correct, testing for a gas is a lot different than traditional soil and rock sampling and assays techniques.

by roenxi 2y ago

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.
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  - roenxi 2y ago
    If they have to theorycraft a resource based on traces of where the hydrogen used to be, but no longer is then it is entirely possible that big hydrogen deposits have just been missed. That seems to be literally what the article today is about. For 90% of minerals they can just say what is in the drill sample is what is underground, exploration geologists aren't generally in the business of imagining what might have been in the core independently of what was directly measured. If we need to apply specific theories to the exploration samples then the "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" logic doesn't hold. Since the evidence has to be interpreted before we can know if there is a deposit it is quite possible that it was interpreted wrongly on a mass scale. You're linking to papers suggesting innovative novel methods for finding the stuff or talking about rechecking based on the latest theoretical understanding, suggesting we don't actually have a big historic archive to draw on. I'm not saying geologists are ignorant, just that Animats' logic doesn't hold for hydrogen. There could be massive deposits that we technically already have the data for except nobody ever bothered to look for it.
scott7ree 2y ago
As a prospector myself, this is false. Assays are expensive for traditional minerals and we never assay for hydrogen as that requires a totally different set of procedures.

deleted 2y ago

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onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago

How often are people drilling for gold or something and accidentally stumble upon oil? I can't imagine this is a common occurrence, given how much effort people put into oil exploration...

scott7ree 2y ago
Often an explorer looking for gold finds something else like copper or nickel. Oil however is generally found in a different environment. H2 is created through serpentinization in areas more prone to mineral discovery.

scott7ree 2y ago

Correct, testing for a gas is a lot different than traditional soil and rock sampling and assays techniques.