In a bid to address the growing demand for hydrogen, scientists from the University of Oxford, Durham University, and the University of Toronto have unveiled research highlighting Earth's continental crust as a potential source of natural, emission-free hydrogen. The study suggests that enough hydrogen has been produced by the Earth's crust over the past billion years to meet human energy needs for approximately 170,000 years.
Currently, hydrogen production relies heavily on hydrocarbons, contributing significantly to global CO2 emissions. As demand is projected to rise from 90 million tonnes in 2022 to 540 million tonnes by 2050, finding sustainable production methods is crucial. Professor Jon Gluyas from Durham University remarked on their approach: "We have successfully developed an exploration strategy for helium and a similar ‘first principles’ approach can be taken for hydrogen."
The research outlines essential factors for locating viable geological hydrogen sources. These include understanding how much hydrogen is produced, its migration patterns underground, and conditions necessary for forming or destroying gas fields. Professor Barbara Sherwood Lollar from the University of Toronto emphasized avoiding environments where microbes consume hydrogen: "Avoiding environments that bring them into contact with the hydrogen is important in preserving hydrogen in economic accumulations."
The study also dispels myths about certain speculative sources like those from Earth's mantle being viable. Instead, it identifies various common geological settings within the crust as promising locations for finding natural hydrogen systems. Lead author Professor Chris Ballentine compared this exploration process to cooking: "Combining the ingredients to find accumulated hydrogen in any of these settings can be likened to cooking a soufflé – get any one of the ingredients, amounts, timing or temperature wrong and you will be disappointed."
Motivated by these findings, researchers have established Snowfox Discovery Ltd., an exploration company focused on identifying significant natural hydrogen deposits.
Their comprehensive review article titled 'Natural Hydrogen Resource Accumulation in the Continental Crust' has been published in Nature Reviews Earth & Environment.