People And Nature ☭ Steve Drury in this article reposted from his Earth-logs blog, writes about the potential of “white” (naturally occurring) hydrogen as an energy carrier. With some comments from me (Simon Pirani) at the end.

The idea of a “hydrogen economy” has been around for at least six decades, its main attraction being that when hydrogen is burned it combines with oxygen to form H2O [water]. It might seem to be the ultimate “green” energy source, but it is currently being touted by governments and petroleum companies in what is widely regarded as “greenwashing”.

The technology favoured by that axis uses steam reforming of the methane that dominates natural petroleum gas, through the reaction:

CH4 + H2O → CO + 3H2

It’s actually not much different from producing coke gas from coal, which began in the 19th century and is now largely abandoned. Because carbon monoxide (CO) reacts with atmospheric oxygen to form CO2 [carbon dioxide] this process is by no means “green” and is properly referred to as “grey” hydrogen.

Workers at one of Hydroma’s hydrogen exploration wells at Bourakebougou, Mali.
Photo from 
Hydroma web site

Only if the CO is stored permanently underground could steam reforming not add to greenhouse warming. That puts the approach in the same category as “carbon capture and storage”, with all the possible difficulties inherent in that technology, which has yet to be demonstrated on a large scale. Such hydrogen is classified as a “blue”.

Colour coding hydrogen is described nicely by the British National Grid. They give another six varieties. Green and yellow hydrogen are produced by electrolysing water using wind or solar power respectively. The pink variety uses nuclear power in the same fashion. Black or brown hydrogen is that produced by coking coal or stewing-up brown coal (lignite) which amazingly are contemplated in Australia and Germany.

There is even a turquoise variety can be produced if methane is somehow turned into hydrogen and solid carbon using renewables. There is another category (white) which is hydrogen produced by a variety of natural, geochemical processes.

Earth-logs discussed white hydrogen in March 2023 when news emerged of gas that was 98% hydrogen leaking from a water borehole in Mali. The local people harnessed this surprising resource to generate electricity for their village. It also emerges in springs from ultramafic rocks, having formed through weathering of the mineral olivine:

3Fe2SiO4 + 2H2O → 2 Fe3O4 + 3SiO­2 +3H2

Much the same reaction occurs beneath the ocean floor where hydrothermal fluids alter basalts and in geothermal springs that emerge from onshore basalt lavas. Such “white” hydrogen emissions are widespread.

So an unknown, but possibly huge amount of hydrogen is leaking into the atmosphere continuously. Because of its tiny nucleus – just a single proton – atmospheric hydrogen quickly escapes to outer space: what a waste!

Equally as interesting is that inducing the breakdown of ultramafic rock to yield hydrogen, by pumping water and carbon dioxide into them, may also be a means of leak-free carbon sequestration.

This produces the complex mineral serpentine and magnesium carbonate. The reaction gives off heat and so is self sustaining until pumping is stopped.

It has been estimated that by 2050 the annual global demand for hydrogen will reach 530 million t. Just how big is the potential resource to meet such a demand?

Natural weathering and hydrothermal processes have always functioned. Some of the hydrogen produced by them may have built-up in reservoirs like the one in Mali, some is escaping. Neither the magnitude of annual natural generation of hydrogen nor the amount trapped in porous sedimentary rocks are known in any detail.

A recent survey of how much may be trapped gives a range from 103 to 1010 million metric tons (Ellis, G.S. & Gelman, S.E. 2024. Model predictions of global geologic hydrogen resources. Science Advances, v. 10, article eado0955; DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.ado0955), most probably 5.6 trillion t.

If only a tenth of that is recoverable, replacing fossil-fuel energy with that from white hydrogen to achieve net-zero CO2 emissions would be sustainable for about 400 years. That magnitude of trapped hydrogen reserves well exceeds all proven reserves of natural gas.

Distribution of ophiolites around the Eastern Mediterranean and Black Seas. Many orogenic
belts are endowed to a similar extent. (From Gültekin Topuz, Istanbul Technical University)

This estimate assumes using only hydrogen that has been naturally produced and stored beneath the Earth’s surface.

Basalts and ultramafic rocks exposed at the land surface as ophiolites – ancient oceanic crust thrust onto continental crust – are abundant on every continent. Inducing hydrogen-producing chemical reactions in them by pumping water and CO2 into them is little different from the technology being used in fracking. This potential resource is effectively limitless.

Combined with renewable energy technology, a hydrogen economy has no conceivable need for fossil fuels, except as organic-chemistry feedstock.

Such a scenario for stabilising climate is almost certainly feasible. It could use the capital, technology and skills currently deployed by the petroleum industry that is currently driving society and the Earth in the opposite direction.

It is capable of drilling 10 km below the continental surface or the ocean floor, and even into the Earth’s mantle that is made of . . . ultramafic rock.

🟠 Simon Pirani comments: My warm thanks to Steve Drury, a friend and comrade for decades. This view of naturally-occurring hydrogen’s potential as a post-fossil-fuel source of energy comes from a geologist whose understanding of science is allied to a socialist view of society.

Technologically, the worst thing about manufactured hydrogen is that the production process is self-defeatingly emissions intensive (“grey” and “blue”), or self-defeatingly energy intensive (“green” and “yellow”). I agree that, by comparison, naturally-produced hydrogen looks more promising. Nevertheless, I have not yet shaken off three types of doubts, as follows.

1. No-one yet knows how much hydrogen is recoverable on any meaningful time-scale. We are not even close to an estimate of the total amount below the earth’s surface: Geoffrey Ellis and Sarah Gelman, in the article that Steve quotes, say: there could be between 1 thousand million tonnes and 10 thousand million million tonnes. Best guess: 5.6 million million tonnes.

Most of this is “probably inaccessible”, Ellis cautions in an informative article published by the US Geological Survey, which funds the research.

The Ukrainian-born geochemist and hydrogen champion Vyacheslav Zgonnik has made a strong case that geologists have not found hydrogen deposits because they have literally not been looking: the rock formations containing fossil fuel deposits, their main focus, are less likely to contain hydrogen.

So little interest was there that hydrogen has been used as the standard carrier gas in gas chromotography, meaning that, even if there was any, it would not show up in the sample.

This research is at a very, very early stage: too early to rely on to fix a problem as devastating as global heating.

2. I accept that, nevertheless, if even a small fraction of the likely total amounts of hydrogen mentioned are recoverable, that would be a vast energy resource. But what if the hydrogen deposits are too deep down to get at, too contaminated with other gases, or simply too tricky to produce? Mixtures with methane, which packs a greenhouse punch many times greater than carbon dioxide, are especially problematic.

The geoscientist and energy consultant Arnout Everts, on the excellent Hydrogen Science Coalition site, voices scepticism about the few existing hydrogen projects. The world’s first, at Bourakebougou, Mali, produces up to 50 tonnes per year. Everts estimates the power output at less than one tenth of that from a medium-sized wind turbine. A discovery in Albania, trumpeted as a game-changer, might at best produce 1/350th of what a typical steel mill would need.

Everts’s conclusion:

Future finds of hydrogen in reservoirs suitable for continuous, commercial-scale collection of the gas would present a very welcome opportunity to decarbonise hydrogen production. At present, the existence of such a resource is purely theoretical.

3. Another of Everts’s examples – a find in Lorraine, France, of 20% hydrogen mixed with other gases, in a coalbed methane test well – reflects my third set of fears. That project could end up as “a coalbed methane development with minor amounts of hydrogen as a byproduct”, Everts warns.

While capturing coalbed methane e.g. for burning in a power station is better than leaking it into the atmosphere, I wouldn’t trust most oil and gas companies to minimise emissions, or even to choose projects that are most beneficial in emissions reduction terms. They never have and, unless forced to by governments, never will.

Regardless of what geologists think, oil company executives will see “white” hydrogen as another string to the bow of their fake “energy transition”. This is a real danger, in the frenzied madness of 21st century capitalism, which forms the context for this discussion. Technologies will be pushed down the roads that corporations want, and their potential for serving humanity will remain unrealised.

Against this is the possibility that communities can take hold of these technologies themselves. The project in Mali gives a glimpse of the potential: it may produce less electricity than a windmill, and is for sure controlled by private business, but still, it has supplied the village of Bourakebougou with electricity, reliably, for seven years, where it had none before.

The fate of “white” hydrogen, like that of other resources and technologies, will be settled in its social context.

More on People & Nature:

🟠  Labour embraces Saudi Arabia’s dystopian ‘energy transition’ (December 2024)

🟠 Community action kills off hydrogen greenwash plan (July 2023)

🟠 The hydrogen hoax (December 2020)

 People & Nature is now on mastodon, as well as twitterwhatsapp and telegram. Please follow! Or email peoplenature@protonmail.com, and we’ll add you to our circulation list (2-4 messages per month).

‘White’ Hydrogen’s Elusive Potential

People And Nature ☭ Steve Drury in this article reposted from his Earth-logs blog, writes about the potential of “white” (naturally occurring) hydrogen as an energy carrier. With some comments from me (Simon Pirani) at the end.

The idea of a “hydrogen economy” has been around for at least six decades, its main attraction being that when hydrogen is burned it combines with oxygen to form H2O [water]. It might seem to be the ultimate “green” energy source, but it is currently being touted by governments and petroleum companies in what is widely regarded as “greenwashing”.

The technology favoured by that axis uses steam reforming of the methane that dominates natural petroleum gas, through the reaction:

CH4 + H2O → CO + 3H2

It’s actually not much different from producing coke gas from coal, which began in the 19th century and is now largely abandoned. Because carbon monoxide (CO) reacts with atmospheric oxygen to form CO2 [carbon dioxide] this process is by no means “green” and is properly referred to as “grey” hydrogen.

Workers at one of Hydroma’s hydrogen exploration wells at Bourakebougou, Mali.
Photo from 
Hydroma web site

Only if the CO is stored permanently underground could steam reforming not add to greenhouse warming. That puts the approach in the same category as “carbon capture and storage”, with all the possible difficulties inherent in that technology, which has yet to be demonstrated on a large scale. Such hydrogen is classified as a “blue”.

Colour coding hydrogen is described nicely by the British National Grid. They give another six varieties. Green and yellow hydrogen are produced by electrolysing water using wind or solar power respectively. The pink variety uses nuclear power in the same fashion. Black or brown hydrogen is that produced by coking coal or stewing-up brown coal (lignite) which amazingly are contemplated in Australia and Germany.

There is even a turquoise variety can be produced if methane is somehow turned into hydrogen and solid carbon using renewables. There is another category (white) which is hydrogen produced by a variety of natural, geochemical processes.

Earth-logs discussed white hydrogen in March 2023 when news emerged of gas that was 98% hydrogen leaking from a water borehole in Mali. The local people harnessed this surprising resource to generate electricity for their village. It also emerges in springs from ultramafic rocks, having formed through weathering of the mineral olivine:

3Fe2SiO4 + 2H2O → 2 Fe3O4 + 3SiO­2 +3H2

Much the same reaction occurs beneath the ocean floor where hydrothermal fluids alter basalts and in geothermal springs that emerge from onshore basalt lavas. Such “white” hydrogen emissions are widespread.

So an unknown, but possibly huge amount of hydrogen is leaking into the atmosphere continuously. Because of its tiny nucleus – just a single proton – atmospheric hydrogen quickly escapes to outer space: what a waste!

Equally as interesting is that inducing the breakdown of ultramafic rock to yield hydrogen, by pumping water and carbon dioxide into them, may also be a means of leak-free carbon sequestration.

This produces the complex mineral serpentine and magnesium carbonate. The reaction gives off heat and so is self sustaining until pumping is stopped.

It has been estimated that by 2050 the annual global demand for hydrogen will reach 530 million t. Just how big is the potential resource to meet such a demand?

Natural weathering and hydrothermal processes have always functioned. Some of the hydrogen produced by them may have built-up in reservoirs like the one in Mali, some is escaping. Neither the magnitude of annual natural generation of hydrogen nor the amount trapped in porous sedimentary rocks are known in any detail.

A recent survey of how much may be trapped gives a range from 103 to 1010 million metric tons (Ellis, G.S. & Gelman, S.E. 2024. Model predictions of global geologic hydrogen resources. Science Advances, v. 10, article eado0955; DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.ado0955), most probably 5.6 trillion t.

If only a tenth of that is recoverable, replacing fossil-fuel energy with that from white hydrogen to achieve net-zero CO2 emissions would be sustainable for about 400 years. That magnitude of trapped hydrogen reserves well exceeds all proven reserves of natural gas.

Distribution of ophiolites around the Eastern Mediterranean and Black Seas. Many orogenic
belts are endowed to a similar extent. (From Gültekin Topuz, Istanbul Technical University)

This estimate assumes using only hydrogen that has been naturally produced and stored beneath the Earth’s surface.

Basalts and ultramafic rocks exposed at the land surface as ophiolites – ancient oceanic crust thrust onto continental crust – are abundant on every continent. Inducing hydrogen-producing chemical reactions in them by pumping water and CO2 into them is little different from the technology being used in fracking. This potential resource is effectively limitless.

Combined with renewable energy technology, a hydrogen economy has no conceivable need for fossil fuels, except as organic-chemistry feedstock.

Such a scenario for stabilising climate is almost certainly feasible. It could use the capital, technology and skills currently deployed by the petroleum industry that is currently driving society and the Earth in the opposite direction.

It is capable of drilling 10 km below the continental surface or the ocean floor, and even into the Earth’s mantle that is made of . . . ultramafic rock.

🟠 Simon Pirani comments: My warm thanks to Steve Drury, a friend and comrade for decades. This view of naturally-occurring hydrogen’s potential as a post-fossil-fuel source of energy comes from a geologist whose understanding of science is allied to a socialist view of society.

Technologically, the worst thing about manufactured hydrogen is that the production process is self-defeatingly emissions intensive (“grey” and “blue”), or self-defeatingly energy intensive (“green” and “yellow”). I agree that, by comparison, naturally-produced hydrogen looks more promising. Nevertheless, I have not yet shaken off three types of doubts, as follows.

1. No-one yet knows how much hydrogen is recoverable on any meaningful time-scale. We are not even close to an estimate of the total amount below the earth’s surface: Geoffrey Ellis and Sarah Gelman, in the article that Steve quotes, say: there could be between 1 thousand million tonnes and 10 thousand million million tonnes. Best guess: 5.6 million million tonnes.

Most of this is “probably inaccessible”, Ellis cautions in an informative article published by the US Geological Survey, which funds the research.

The Ukrainian-born geochemist and hydrogen champion Vyacheslav Zgonnik has made a strong case that geologists have not found hydrogen deposits because they have literally not been looking: the rock formations containing fossil fuel deposits, their main focus, are less likely to contain hydrogen.

So little interest was there that hydrogen has been used as the standard carrier gas in gas chromotography, meaning that, even if there was any, it would not show up in the sample.

This research is at a very, very early stage: too early to rely on to fix a problem as devastating as global heating.

2. I accept that, nevertheless, if even a small fraction of the likely total amounts of hydrogen mentioned are recoverable, that would be a vast energy resource. But what if the hydrogen deposits are too deep down to get at, too contaminated with other gases, or simply too tricky to produce? Mixtures with methane, which packs a greenhouse punch many times greater than carbon dioxide, are especially problematic.

The geoscientist and energy consultant Arnout Everts, on the excellent Hydrogen Science Coalition site, voices scepticism about the few existing hydrogen projects. The world’s first, at Bourakebougou, Mali, produces up to 50 tonnes per year. Everts estimates the power output at less than one tenth of that from a medium-sized wind turbine. A discovery in Albania, trumpeted as a game-changer, might at best produce 1/350th of what a typical steel mill would need.

Everts’s conclusion:

Future finds of hydrogen in reservoirs suitable for continuous, commercial-scale collection of the gas would present a very welcome opportunity to decarbonise hydrogen production. At present, the existence of such a resource is purely theoretical.

3. Another of Everts’s examples – a find in Lorraine, France, of 20% hydrogen mixed with other gases, in a coalbed methane test well – reflects my third set of fears. That project could end up as “a coalbed methane development with minor amounts of hydrogen as a byproduct”, Everts warns.

While capturing coalbed methane e.g. for burning in a power station is better than leaking it into the atmosphere, I wouldn’t trust most oil and gas companies to minimise emissions, or even to choose projects that are most beneficial in emissions reduction terms. They never have and, unless forced to by governments, never will.

Regardless of what geologists think, oil company executives will see “white” hydrogen as another string to the bow of their fake “energy transition”. This is a real danger, in the frenzied madness of 21st century capitalism, which forms the context for this discussion. Technologies will be pushed down the roads that corporations want, and their potential for serving humanity will remain unrealised.

Against this is the possibility that communities can take hold of these technologies themselves. The project in Mali gives a glimpse of the potential: it may produce less electricity than a windmill, and is for sure controlled by private business, but still, it has supplied the village of Bourakebougou with electricity, reliably, for seven years, where it had none before.

The fate of “white” hydrogen, like that of other resources and technologies, will be settled in its social context.

More on People & Nature:

🟠  Labour embraces Saudi Arabia’s dystopian ‘energy transition’ (December 2024)

🟠 Community action kills off hydrogen greenwash plan (July 2023)

🟠 The hydrogen hoax (December 2020)

 People & Nature is now on mastodon, as well as twitterwhatsapp and telegram. Please follow! Or email peoplenature@protonmail.com, and we’ll add you to our circulation list (2-4 messages per month).

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