Today is Tuesday, March 19, 2024.
Hydrogen is an attractive alternative to traditional fossil fuels because it can be used to produce energy without generating carbon dioxide as a by-product.
Although an odorless and colorless gas, it is becoming more and more frequent to hear about its natural occurrence, emanating from the ground in certain parts of the Globe. And even in some cases due to eventual explosions, initially misbelieved to be caused by methane. Hydrogen is also a highly flammable gas.
Natural hydrogen have been around for all Earth's history, but only now is properly getting measured with adequate equipment. And new scientific research related to its genesis.
A few weeks ago a new scientific study reported a new observation. A minimum of 200 tons of H2 is being vented annually from the deep underground Bulqizë chromite mine in Albania, making it one of the largest recorded H2 flow rates to date. According to the editor's summary, this large hydrogen flux is likely from long-term accumulation within a faulted reservoir.
Places with similar geology should be good targets for finding other natural sources of hydrogen. Click here for the Science article "A deep reservoir for hydrogen drives intense degassing in the Bulqizë ophiolite". You need to be a subscriber to get full access to this article.
According to Geoffrey Ellis, a petroleum geochemist with the U.S. Geological Survey in an interview for National Geographic, the petroleum industry was also not on the lookout for hydrogen, although they sometimes stumbles across it while questing for oil or methane gas deposits. “They weren’t interested. It wasn’t what they were looking for.” So, “they just didn’t report it, or they buried it in some company report”.
Carbon Credits Markets - and the associated portal Hydrogen Markets (www.hydrogenmarkets.com) - already posted about other natural occurrences:
According to the National Geographic article, hydrogen hunters tend to focus on geologic manufacturers, iron or magnesium-rich volcanic rocks that in the presence of hot water react and can emit hydrogen. This reaction can either create a "natural stream" or a "natural hydrogen reservoir". The leakage of one of these reservoirs was apparently the case of the Bulqizë mine in Albania.
Click at the image below for the article "Massive hydrogen reservoir discovered beneath an Albanian mine could be an untapped source of clean energy" by LiveScience.
And here for the full National Geographic article "The gas in this exploding mine is odorless, colorless—and could transform the world" mentioned above. It includes a LiDAR image of the North Carolina coast, with clear circular indications of hydrogen gas seeping from underground.
Hydrogen is more and more on the spotlight. Tomorrow, another post about it.
