<\/p>\n
In a new story for our latest print issue, freelance reporter James Dineen took a look at the 21st-century gold rush for naturally occurring hydrogen gas. This is an area of research I\u2019ve been fascinated by lately, so let\u2019s take a look at the potential and the questions that still linger.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Today, hydrogen is overwhelmingly made using fossil fuels, generally natural gas. And most of it is used in petroleum refining or goes on to make fertilizer and other chemicals. But in recent years, many in the climate world have imagined a future where its production is clean too.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019d asked me a few years ago, I would have said the race for clean hydrogen was between methods that use electrolyzers powered with renewable electricity and operations that use established, fossil-fuel-based approaches cleaned up with carbon capture. But both those methods have struggled to gain ground, largely because of their high cost.<\/p>\n
Lately, there\u2019s been momentum in a new field: geologic hydrogen. Companies have found naturally occurring hydrogen resources across Africa, Asia, Europe, Australia, and North America.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The US Geological Survey publishes a map of hydrogen prospectivity in the country (basically, where the gas is most likely to occur naturally). One hot spot is the Midwest\u2014specifically the Midcontinent Rift, winding from Kansas to Michigan. The planet\u2019s crust was stretched and split there about a billion years ago, causing molten rock to push up through the crack. The result today is a lot of iron-rich rock, which can react with water to readily form hydrogen.<\/p>\n
HyTerra, an Australian company, is searching for hydrogen across Nebraska and Kansas, and it\u2019s already found samples of gas with hydrogen concentrations up to 96%. Koloma, one of the most capitalized companies in the space with total funding over $400 million, is prospecting in the region as well.<\/p>\n
One of the major questions these companies have is just how much hydrogen is produced by natural processes, and whether it can be effectively captured. Hydrogen is an incredibly light gas with a small molecular weight, so it can slip through even tiny cracks in rock.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
As James covered in his story, there are some promising signs. Researchers examined a few dozen boreholes at a mine in northern Ontario and found that each one released eight kilograms of hydrogen per year. Given that there are more than 14,000 boreholes at this one site alone, that\u2019s a lot of potential hydrogen to capture.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
#big #hydrogen #underground<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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