Limitless White Hydrogen!!
July 14, 2023
By Paul Homewood
h/t Ian Magness
He’s away with the fairies again!
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/07/13/white-hydrogen-disrupt-global-energy-net-zero/
Of course, if he’s right we should immediately stop wasting hundreds of billions on building wind and solar farms, and the electrolysers and carbon capture plants that he has been advocation for years!
Indeed, this is a classic example of how technology has moved forward over time – through market forces, and not driven by subsidies and government diktat.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
I just rather like the fact that AEP’s latest fever-dream would require rather a lot of drilling all over the place to find this self-replenishing gas, just at a time where people like him have been loudly advocating that we should STOP doing that very same thing.
Plus ca change
Plus c’est la meme chose
Where is this *limitless* supply?
At present, it’s early days. The industry has just one known example of hydrogen accumulating in commercial amounts. It was found by accident in Mali, West Africa, in the 1980s
https://techxplore.com/news/2023-07-earth-huge-natural-hydrogenand-prospectors.html
From there it is one simple generalization step .. 🙂
It will never happen. Hydrogen is a massively dangerous greenhouse gas that will cause all life on Earth to become extinct yesterday. /sarc
Also more immediately by blowing us up, liked the idea that the experiment should start at HoC. ‘For ’tis the sport to have the engineer
Hoist with his own petard’
I cannot read this Paul, like so much else, it is behind a paywall.
The Chicago school teaches “Monetise, monetise, monetise”! … and they are all doing it.
Malcolm, I recommend you familiarise yourself with the website “wayback machine” Here is the article for you to read free.
https://web.archive.org/web/20230714044846/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/07/13/white-hydrogen-disrupt-global-energy-net-zero/
Sadly some browsers or internet providers block a lot of web archives. I can’t access anything on wayback machine.
switch off javascript and you can read the article, but any charts/pictures you will have to click on the header. Clickthe little padlock to the left of the site name, click site settings go to java script and change allow to block, it works on a lot of the paywalled newspapers, but not all.
What’s your problem? You have to buy a print newspaper. An online paper has to pay it’s staff so why should you expect it for free?
Paying for access to overseas newspapers so that we can read the usual journalistic rubbish is what the problem is. We have to endure duplication of news . Many just reprint from the BBC .NYT and so on and a fee is expected for months of this so called ‘news’
The rest is reports on so called celebrities and Royal gossip and Climate They are not worth the paper they are printed on .
I can view RT.com and Sputnikglobe.com in my country, so far, and where can you get printed versions of those.?
What, Hideously White?
I guess July 14th is ‘identifying’ as April 1st.
i saw this piece linked in the daily sceptic and knowing how Paul delights in the output of AEP wondered how quickly it would be linked here.
White hydrogen? isn’t that what Unicorn farts are made of?
I’m not sure if AEP is suggesting we should drill for White Hydrogen but not drill for natural gas, which would be much easier, much cheaper and easier to distribute in our existing network rather than build a whole new infrastructure for hydrogen.
But burning hydrogen doesn’t produce carbon (sic) emissions only water. Of course there will be WCS (called ‘condensing and freezing’) just in case water vapour might turn out to be a ghg. It can’t be liquid water as that could cause sea levels to rise. Frozen it would replenish the rapidly melting glaciers around the world. On the other hand, saving costs by only condensing could mean lifting hose pipe bans and fill up water reservoirs – and not just in the UK. What a winner.
No Malcolm, burning it produces the even more dangerous chemical Dihydrogen monoxide.
Water vapour is by far the largest greenhouse gas but is more transient than co2 . Whether the extra water vapour will be a problem I don’t know but it has to go somewhere
Ah yes, Philip, DHMO. I was teaching when the campaign started to have it banned because:
it is also known as hydroxyl acid, and is the major component of acid rain.
contributes to the “greenhouse effect”.
may cause severe burns.
contributes to the erosion of our natural landscape.
accelerates corrosion and rusting of many metals.
may cause electrical failures and decreased effectiveness of automobile brakes.
has been found in excised tumors of terminal cancer patients.
Despite the danger, dihydrogen monoxide is often used:
as an industrial solvent and coolant.
in nuclear power plants.
as a fire retardant.
in the distribution of pesticides. Even after washing, produce remains contaminated by this chemical.
as an additive in certain “junk-foods” and other food products.
Burning hydrogen also creates far more oxides of nitrogen than natural gas.
https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlepdf/2021/ea/d1ea00037c
Has anyone done the sums on this? I guess neat water vapour has about the same infrared absorbing capacity as neat CO2 or methane and what counts towards their per molecule heating potential in the real atmospheric gas mix is (a) their relative abundance determining their position along the logarithmic curve, and (b) their lifetime in gas form. I again don’t know how many more molecules have to be “burnt” than other fossil sources per unit of energy but I rather suspect that the marginal contribution of released molecules of fossil hydrogen will be rather trivial with their added number not much making a difference.
Mind you, being trivial is no barrier to the apoplexy of the true zealot.
Yet again, a warming and net zero evangelist hasn’t bothered to do the basic research, perhaps in this case by talking to a geologist.
Just ignoring the very high costs for a second, whilst it may be true that there is far more drillable hydrogen world-wide than we presently know about and indeed local developments may be feasible, the size, rarity and location of the underground reservoirs makes any notion that hydrogen obtained in this way can power economies on a grid scale is just ludicrous. The point is that hydrogen, whilst a very abundant element, is overwhelmingly found in nature combined with other elements, not least oxygen and carbon. It also escapes easily, even if it hasn’t reacted with these other elements, as it is clearly prone to do. Sizeable pure hydrogen reservoirs, to a far higher degree than hydrocarbon reservoirs, are an unusual quirk, not a common feature of geological formations.
As for the idea that such reservoirs will just keep on giving even after you’ve extracted large volumes, what has AEP been smoking?
Well actually it is possibly not as far fetched as it may seem. The “team” for this company are all very experienced geologists. I doubt they are trying to pull some sort of scam and they are not begging for state handouts.
https://h2au.co/team
The longevity theory is based on continuous natural production of H2 being tapped into.
The story has all the hallmarks of a scam. They are looking for investors. Put some money into it and after that I’ve got a nice bridge to sell you.
kzbkzb, I happen to personally know one of them and have worked with him in the past. Please withdraw your personal slur on the character of those you know nothing about.
Very well I don’t know the persons involved. However I remain extremely sceptical that this is any answer to our energy problems.
kzbkzb: you may be right in your scepticism but if people want to risk their own money looking for it, then let them. My objection would be if they are subsidised to do so, which is probably highly likely. The geological evidence is strong and has been known about for years. Given a sensible prospectus and a bit of due diligence (I’ve been drilling holes in the ground for the last 50 years), I might consider it.
Why does an invisible has come in many colours?
Because it is political.
I’ve copied the article up to the inevitable advert.There’s more but it’s in the same vein.
“Every few years a disruptive technology comes out of left field and entirely changes the future of the global energy system, smashing into our consciousness like a thunderclap.
It happened with shale fracking around 2009-2011, confounding OPEC, Russia, and an opinion establishment still hooked on the great red herring of peak oil.
America went from an alarming energy deficit to become the top exporter of oil and gas within a decade. The dollar came roaring back. So did American power.
Today’s exuberant rush for “white” hydrogen has the same feel.
We are suddenly waking up to the very real possibility that vast reserves of natural hydrogen lie under our feet and can plausibly be extracted at costs that blow away the competition, ultimately undercutting methane on pure price.
Scientists have long argued that pockets of exploitable geological hydrogen are more abundant than hitherto supposed.
The perpetual burning gas at Chimaera in Turkey – believed to be the source of the Olympic flame – has a hydrogen content reaching 11.3pc. There is another such marvel at Los Fuegos Eternos in the Philippines.
Hydrogen’s role in net zero
Pie chart with 7 slices.
Cumulative emissions reduction by mitigation measure, 2021-2050
View as data table, Hydrogen’s role in net zero
RenewablesRenewables
ElectrificationElectrification
Technology performanceTechnology performance
Carbon capture, utilisation and storageCarbon capture, utilisation and storage
Behaviour and avoided demandBehaviour and avoided demand
HydrogenHydrogen
Other fuel shiftsOther fuel shifts
SOURCE: IEA
HYDROGEN’S ROLE IN NET ZERO
Cumulative emissions reduction by mitigation measure, 2021-2050
End of interactive chart.
It has been known since 2012 that hydrogen beneath the village of Bourakébougou in Mali has 98pc purity. The site was discovered in the 1980s when it blew up in the face of a local man smoking a cigarette while drilling for water.
Professor Alain Prinzhofer from the Institute of Physics in Paris found that the gas flow remained constant over time – the pressure even rose – confirming a hypothesis that hydrogen can keep renewing itself by a chemical reaction underground.
What is new is that the world now needs that hydrogen and is acting on the insights.
The US Geological Survey concluded in April that there is probably enough accessible hydrogen in the earth’s subsurface to meet total global demand for “hundreds of years”.
The US Energy Department is drawing up plans to help kick start the industry, deeming the potential “astronomical”.
Viacheslav Zgonnik, a Ukrainian geologist, thinks white geologic hydrogen could be so cheap and abundant that it conquers the energy market.
“We think that we can reach $1 a kilo in the long-run and provide baseload power 24/7. It can be compressed for storage in steel tanks. It is not that expensive,” he said.”
Thanks for the info.
Re the reference to the US Geological Survey, the British Geological Survey estimated 10 years ago that the Bowland Share Formation in the north of England held between 822 tcf and 2282 tcf of gas , when annual consumption was less than 3 tcf. Is it just negligence or incompetence that has prevented the UK exploiting this.
Ambrose has missed a trick?
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-07-13/china-takes-solar-farms-to-sea-in-next-clean-energy-breakthrough
Solar Farms Out at Sea Are Clean Energy’s Next Breakthrough
Technology for floating panels is expanding beyond lakes and dams to move into the oceans. China plans huge projects off its eastern coastline.
ByBloomberg News
14 July 2023 at 00:00 BST
Buffeted by waves as high as 10 meters (32 feet) in China’s Yellow Sea about 30 kilometers off the coast of Shandong province, two circular rafts carrying neat rows of solar panels began generating electricity late last year, a crucial step toward a new breakthrough for clean energy.
The experiment by State Power Investment Corp., China’s biggest renewable power developer, and Norway-based developer Ocean Sun AS is one of the most high-profile tests yet of offshore solar technology. It’s a potential advance in the sector that would enable locations out at sea to host renewables, and help land-constrained regions accelerate a transition away from fossil fuels……. more
Solar farms are hugely inefficient at our aptitude . How does going to the expense of floating them expensively in damaging sea water help?
The biggest problem I can see is the spray drying on the inevitably hotter than ambient solar panels and drastically reducing their efficiency.
In my – albeit limited experience – marine engineering projects usually produce exponentially increasing engineering headaches, as the offshore wind industry are starting to find!
Good point as the wave and tidal industry have also found out.
As Paul states this is where governments with their largesse of our cash should butt out. The basic principle of naturally occuring H2 has been known for a long time – whether or not it is likely enconomically viable has not yet been proven and may never be, but then again ….
This UK company has experienced, hard headed real experts (and it’s generally termed “gold” hydrogen not white as the latter is clearly not PC enough)
https://h2au.co
As they say themselves “Geology-led, commercially driven.” They are not carrying a begging bowl for state hand outs.
“……the great red herring of peak oil. “
There’s one to tuck away for the future.
“Every few years a disruptive technology comes out of left field and entirely changes the future of the global energy system, smashing into our consciousness like a thunderclap.
It happened with shale fracking around 2009-2011……”
I see. So fracking’s OK now, is it?
“Today’s wildcat drilling for hydrogen is very like the early days of fracking in Texas and Pennsylvania.”
Yes, it appears so.
“The one place where they did try to detect hydrogen was the old Soviet Union because of a (false) hypothesis that it was a geological marker for oil and gas deposits.”
That’s a shame.
“They discovered it in rich volumes across much of the country. That is the likely template for the rest of the world.”
Excellent! Except the Russians simply ignored this bonanza of cheap, clean, abundant fuel and built an expensive natural gas pipeline that got blown up.
“The big oil and gas drillers are watching from the sidelines, just as they did at the start of fracking.”
So who, precisely, is drilling for this stuff. The guy with the fag?
“The critical breakthrough will probably happen somewhere within a year or two.”
Or not. Like we haven’t been waiting for Fusion in ten years, for the last 50 years.
“Hydrogen has a little understood and incalculable advantage over fossil fuels.”
Well it would be incalculable if it’s little understood.
“The bore hole can theoretically produce for ever, just like geothermal. You don’t have to keep redrilling, and you don’t have the decline curve of oil and gas.”
So, like peak oil then, just in reverse.
…..”mostly from natural gas made by steam reforming, which doubles the cost.”
And the CO2 emissions, to produce a fuel with far less energy density. We’ll remember you said that.
“The next net zero billionaires might well be gas explorers drilling holes in the ground.”
Wait! That already happened!
People seem to forget that we (older ones) grew up with “town gas” which was mainly hydrogen
With carbon monoxide as well. When I was a kid this toxic and explosive gas came through a gas tap in the kitchen wall. It then had a rubber tube going to the cooker. How did we ever survive.
Town gas was 49% hydrogen, 28.5% methane, 19.5% CO2 and 3% CO.
The 3 important gas properties are molecule size, Lower Explosive Limit[lowest concentration of gas that allows explosion] and explosion pressure.
Hydrogen is used for leak testing due to its small molecule size. Hydrogen has the highest explosion pressure and is used for testing of explosion proof enclosures. The LEL is 4% which is the same as for methane.
I have no information of how mixing in the other elements to create Town Gas. One can assume that it will increase the molecule size and reduce the explosion pressure compared to 100% hydrogen. The LEL would be similar.
It’s easy to take the micky out of this article because it is by AEP but that does not automatically make it entirely wrong. Naturally occurring H2 definitely does exist and really is generating electricity (and used water as a byproduct)
https://hydrogen-central.com/first-kind-discovery-mali-vast-reservoirs-clean-hydrogen-gas/
The article describes the known science and geology involved.
Whether or not the scale is there globally is in question but it is not an entirely absurd idea.
Ray, from your link there is this gem in the last paragraph.
“As for Diallo, he started a new company called Hydroma, which now produces electricity for the area via the hydrogen reservoir, and is looking into using it as a means to create green hydrogen via electrolysis.”
Using white Hydrogen to make “green” Hydrogen., thus wasting about 40% of your original Hydrogen.
You couldn’t make it up. but they have.
That last section is unfortunate wording by the journalist. Hydroma is NOT proposing to use natural hydrogen to generate electricity to power electrolysers – that really would be insanity.
They are however proposing “A pioneer in the discovery, research, exploration and operation of natural hydrogen in Mali and worldwide, Hydroma also actively develops green hydrogen and ammonia production, storage, transport and distribution projects in West Africa and Canada for local use and massive exports toward Europe and international markets.”
https://hydroma.ca
Quite a while back I saw a project that intended to produce Hydrogen by digging up and crushing Olivine and then wetting it in enclosed containers which changes it to Serpentine and releases Hydrogen in the process. A pretty slow process – IIRC about a year per batch, and so you’d need a lot of containers and space to produce a commercial amount. I haven’t seen any more since (maybe 8 years ago). Later, sell the crushed Serpentine for building projects.
Seems likely that those pockets of Hydrogen would be produced by the same process (serpentinisation of Olivine) where large deposits of Olivine get wet, and where by chance there are cavities or porous rocks capped by non-porous rocks that collect the Hydrogen. Maybe increase production rate by fracking and the injected water would be de-oxygenated to produce Hydrogen.
Thus if you know the geology of the area, producing Hydrogen may technically be feasible. Looks like a pretty high risk of leakage, though, and you’d need to purify the evolved gas. Unless you injected de-oxygenated water, likely you’d have enough Oxygen mixed in with it to produce an explosive mixture, and of course it would have water-vapour and Nitrogen in there too.
The problem with Hydrogen is that it’s pretty dangerous when mishandled, and even NASA recently had a delayed launch because their seals didn’t seal properly. If we started using it as a fuel for the general population, we can expect a lot more leakages and some pretty dramatic explosions. Since the Hydrogen molecule is too light to be held by gravity, any leakage will end up in space and lost to the Earth, and that’s bound to affect the Ozone layer as it passes through. Basically, not really a good idea overall.
Simon your first points are a perfect description of the natual process.
With regard to leakage I would make 2 points. Firstly you can inject H2 into the gas grid (town gas was almost half H2). For other applications H2 can be stored in other forms than as a free gas. The option below was put forward almost 20 years ago.
Click to access stp_39_britton.pdf
I don’t believe we should write off natural H2 used as an option alongside existing fuels if it is economically available on our territory.
Looks like Grant Shapps has already written hydrogen off for UK domestic supply.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/13/uk-poised-to-drop-plans-for-hydrogen-to-replace-natural-gas-in-homes
– – –
In any case…
Hydrogen 11 times worse than CO2 for climate, says new report
April 11, 2022
New reports show how fugitive hydrogen emissions can indirectly produce warming effects 11 times worse than those of CO2.
https://newatlas.com/environment/hydrogen-greenhouse-gas/
Ray – I grew up with “town gas” supplies, and also remember when the UK changed over to Natural Gas and all our gas appliances had their jets changed to use the new gas supplies. Thus I know it’s practical to use Hydrogen in the gas supply, though any major change to flame-speed and air-mix required will involve changes to the gas appliances.
A problem with using pure Hydrogen is however that the flame is colourless, and that there is no practical way to add a scent agent so that you can smell a leak (Methane has no smell, but is scented with garlic so we can detect a leak easily, and we associate garlic with a gas-leak). Thus the professionals looking for a gas-leak in a Hydrogen system tend to walk along holding a broom in front of them, which will catch fire if it encounters a Hydrogen flame.
Various ideas have been tried for using hydrides as storage for Hydrogen. There used to be a cigarette-lighter available, using a lump of Palladium as the storage, but somewhat costly if you want to store a lot. Probably the most-practical system used a Titanium-Iron alloy in granules, reducing the energy-loss of the compression needed to get a sufficient quantity stored (Bob Lazar ran his car this way, using Hydrogen produced by electrolysis powered by solar cells). Hydrogen may have a decent energy delivery per kg, but the low(est) molecular weight means that the energy delivered per volume at a specific pressure is low.
If the idea of fracking and thus generating Hydrogen from Olivine works out cheap enough, we’d be fools to ignore it. However, I’d suggest using that energy locally to generate electricity for wider distribution, or using that Hydrogen in the Haber process to produce fertilisers, rather than sending that gas elsewhere to be used as a gaseous fuel. Changing to Natural Gas in the pipelines did, as I recall, result in fewer gas explosions, and changing back will thus probably result in more of them again.
While I agree that getting Hydrogen this way could be commercially viable, I disagree with using it as a general fuel for ordinary people. The risk seems excessive for the gains, and hydrocarbon gases/liquids should be a lot safer for general use.
Gentlemen, please do not forget that this story of “White Hydrogen” is basically a nice version of chase for subsidies. And I can tell you, knowing one of these ventures, that the politicians open magnanimously “their” wallets to pay hefty subsidies for these extremely speculative projects. I do not know exactly what are the scientific foundations of these ventures, certainly there are professors forom some university which are easily enrolled. The key is the magic words “White Hydrogen”. This is a new kind of “Cargo Cult” for the public. And this is happening just here and now, in the EU. The wallets I call “theirs” as in fact it is the taxpayer who pays the price of his ignorance. Sad story, but repeats ceaselessly.
Would you be able to make us aware of these “subsidies” you are declaring. From a UK perspective I am not aware of either any subsidies on offer or being claimed for.
Please substantiate your claim.
There is already a better way to get free hydrogen. The Dr James Tour research group has found a great way to make free hydrogen. Some while back he found a way to make graphene from waste materials like plastics and even household waste. It’s done by hitting it with a brief burst of high voltage. The graphene can then be added to concrete to make it and tarmac much stronger so you need much less to build or repair things(think potholes). There are many other uses as well.
They have now found that when they make the graphene a by product is hydrogen which in effect is free because they make the money on the graphene. It seems a win/win. He is now patenting the process and they are starting a company to make it.
I recently commented on here about novel carbon allotropes being used in thermo electric generation to hugley increase efficiency. Graphene is now also being touted in aartificial photosynthesis and hydrogen production.
https://www.materialstoday.com/carbon/news/light-boosts-hydrogen-generation-on-graphene/#:~:text=“We%20found%20that%20graphene%20can,etched%20porous%20silicon%20nitride%20films.
It appears materials development is the significant new research to follow.
I believe that when you use hydrogen in a vehicle water vapour comes out of the tailpipe. If this is the case, driving 30mn vehicles, just in the UK, would increase cloud cover and act as a so called greenhouse gas. Just the thing that these eco-nuts are concerned about.
Hydrogen will leak through existing pipework unless the hydrogen is bonded with something else. Even Shapps “has expressed skepticism about using hydrogen for home heating” .
My preference would be to gasify coal underground because the UK sits on or near billions of tons of coal. Near = under our coastal waters
‘Indeed, this is a classic example of how technology has moved forward over time’
Uhhh . . . no. Nothing has happened here. The alleged discovery of alleged vast amounts of hydrogen STOP. All else is speculation and pipe dreams. Indeed, they talk about crushing rock from 20k down, not just piping it up. At this point, it would be easier to get at if it were on the moon. Even Jupiter’s moons.
Surely burning this “White Hydrogen” will increase the amount of humidity in the atmosphere and accelerate any manmade warming?
Pardon me for interrupting, but am I the only person who has never heard of ‘white’ hydrogen? Happy to be tutored in the subject.
Here is a good explanation on something that is new to most of us, it seems intriguing
View at Medium.com
Considering the rarity of free hydrogen, it’s not intriguing at all. It’s silly.
‘Due to the lack of dedicated research thus far, it is hard to evaluate the white hydrogen resources in the world. But since march 2021, the initiative EarthH2 is helping scientists and industrialists join forces and together increase the current knowledge on the topic of natural hydrogen.’
Scammers all.
The problem isn’t ‘lack of dedicated research.’ The problem is lack of free hydrogen.
Ah, I’m not a complete dumb ass then. The stuff is still in the ground because its a geological curiosity and impossible to produce at any scale. Back to the drawing board.
View at Medium.com
Ahh…but the thing is, in similar vein, no matter how much the anti-fracking mob want to keep us from fracking, the gas will still be there when more mature brains get into government.