‘Gold hydrogen’ is an untapped resource in depleted oil wells

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/gold-hydrogen

by unripe_syntax • 4 years ago

91 86 4 years ago

wired.co.uk

Weryj• 4 years ago

Have we not learnt: "to generate hydrogen and CO2."

eloff• 4 years ago

Only if they can do something with the CO2 other than releasing it into the atmosphere. Like trapping it underground or storing it somehow.

It's not a totally crazy idea, carbon capture from the atmosphere is very hard - there's only 400 parts per million. Carbon capture from concentrated sources, like the smokestacks of coal power plants is a real thing. It remains to be seen if it's done responsibly.

lostlogin• 4 years ago

The article says they intend to leave it in the wells, and in one case, under a lake (which the locals are opposing).

brutusborn2• 4 years ago

Yes we have, CO2 only matters if it gets released. The article even suggests some solutions.

Please don't make CO2 a boogieman when it doesn't need to be. CO2 produced in a wellbore =/= CO2 in the atmosphere.

Teever2• 4 years ago

We've taken the biosphere to the brink of devastation through this kind of carefree approach with CO2.

The precautionary principle needs to at the forefront any large project involving hydrocarbons. Maybe instead of trusting the companies that got us into this mess we should, do the opposite, and not trust their claims?

dataflow• 4 years ago

Honestly, "don't worry about the CO2, we can confine it" sounds a lot like "don't worry about the plastic, we'll recycle it".

oehpr• 4 years ago

"gold hydrogen"

My god the hydrocarbon industry is shameless. "Our hydrogen got dumped on with this color grading system." "Not with out gold tier ultra premium deluxe hydrogen."

And what happens to the carbon that hydrogen is bonded to?

Capturing or otherwise neutralizing the CO2 must be done safely, says Stephen Wallace, who runs a microbiology lab at the University of Edinburgh. But he adds that Cemvita Factory’s idea of

OK so no plans.

The most inexpensive thing possible will happen. This is grey hydrogen with branding.

AtlasBarfed3• 4 years ago

Hydrogen is a trojan horse. I give you exhibit A.

nr2x4• 4 years ago

There’s a lot of places with a ton of solar though, and you can use that for hydrogen.

It could be a potential export from the Middle East. They also have the infra already.

throwawaylinux• 4 years ago

I'm assuming tax payers will be on the hook to give oil corporations billions of dollars in "carbon credits" for capturing the carbon that they would otherwise have otherwise polluted in the course of their petroleum profiteering.

darawk2• 4 years ago

As they should. That's the whole point of carbon credits. If you produce energy without producing CO2, you should get credit for that.

kamray239• 4 years ago

Yeah, burning oil (with microbes this time) to make hydrogen while wasting the rest of the energy in the oil (to sustain microbes) while generating the same emissions as oil (but using microbes instead of burning it in engines) so that when the hydrogen (which has less energy than oil because microbes) can be used without harmful emissions in the cityscape (but overall double the emissions of hydrocarbons per mile because microbes).

It doesn't sound good when you put it like that, so you call it gold instead, supplanting the """"actual"""" meaning of "gold hydrogen" which is emissionless hydrogen pockets underground. Fuck the colour system though, it's ridiculous obfuscation. This is just plain old "hydrogen we made by wasting half the energy from oil (using microbes)".

PS. For a little substantiation to those "less energy" claims, dihydrogen has a heat of combustion of ~290 kJ/mol. Methane has 890 kJ/mol, and ideally decomposes into two hydrogen molecules at 580 kJ/mol. Add in the fact that such a reaction literally cannot exist and whatever reaction the microbes do, they probably do to gain energy as they release the carbon, we can expect a lower ratio of hydrogen molecules to methane in. With longer hydrocarbons, the super ideal ratio drops, as well as with switching to more complex hydrocarbons, so we're talking hyper idealised scenario here. This is overall a pretty bad idea, probably not far from SMR in efficiency, if not worse.

EDIT: I've gone and balanced it out, assuming that the microbes use water to pull the oxygen from (as they do with extreme likelihood), the ideal reaction is CH₄ + 2 H₂O → CO₂ + 4 H₂ with an enthalpy of 252.8 kJ/mol. That's more endothermic than SMR, which sits at 206 kJ/mol. Both are very strongly endothermic. _It would, genuinely be way more efficient to just burn natural gas or your output hydrogen to make ""grey"" hydrogen._ This is garbage and results in higher emissions than existing, widespread technology accounting for ~78% of global hydrogen production. What the hell! Not to mention that both of these are a horrible idea beacuse it's genuinely more environmentally friendly to just burn natural gas. This causes more emissions in every case than just natural gas.

pxmpxm• 4 years ago

I imagine you prefer "green" strip mining for EV battery and motor precursors?

hinkley3• 4 years ago

Once inside the well, the microbes began breaking down the residual oil hydrocarbons in there—dregs that would be unprofitable to extract—to generate hydrogen and CO2.

So brown hydrogen, then.

kamray239• 4 years ago

Effectively. Less efficient than SMR (ideally 253 kJ/mol against 206 kJ/mol, microbes consume more, so even less so), produces literal CO₂, uses fossil fuels and is in any case has higher emissions than green hydrogen ever will. Or diesel. Or gasoline. Seems like a fairly bad idea.

permo-w2• 4 years ago

sounds like a bad idea in general, but also sounds like it could be very profitable

hinkley3• 4 years ago

I just finished reading “Project Hail Mary” and to very aptly quote the protagonist: what could go wrong?

thinkcontext4• 4 years ago

Proton Technologies (mentioned in the article) claims to solve the problem by using a membrane that only lets hydrogen pass through. That way all the co2 just stays in the well.

Pxtl3• 4 years ago

Yeah, this is just another flavor of blue hydrogen -- h2 generated in a way that releases co2 and they're suuuuper sure they'll figure out a way to capture it.

Hydrogen tech is just a scam to greenwash the legacy fossil fuels industry.

nmridul• 4 years ago

This.. It stuck me when I saw Aramco (Saudi oil major) advertising Hydrogen tech on TV.

The brown and black hydrogen will be far cheaper than green hydrogen for some time. They also have the advantage of existing subsidised infrastructure for drilling and pumping. And when the hydrogen vehicles and Power stations become common, the common man have no choice but to purchase this cheaper hydrogen

stubish• 4 years ago

The common man has no choice but to purchase what is available to them. With regulation, that will be Green. Without regulation, its unlikely retailers will even bother to stock Green until it is cheaper. Free Market, meet Tragedy of the Commons.

goethes_kind• 4 years ago

IMHO hydrogen as energy storage is not a scam. I can see it scaling much better than any other alternative as a means of energy storage and transport.

However there are also lots of industry incumbents who are proposing hydrogen-themed solutions that are not even carbon neutral.

j16sdiz• 4 years ago

Hydrogen, being the lightest gas, is much harder to store long term without leak.

hannasm• 4 years ago

"a biotech firm in Texas, had spritzed a carefully selected combination of bacteria"

Would this spritz be measured in gallons or tons?

As much as it's worth considering the co2 byproduct and it's affect, doesn't pumping large volumes of liquids into the earth like this lead to all sorts of unintended consequences as well?

a3w2• 4 years ago

Exponential growth means you could use a few hundred cells per type I guess.

Leaking these cells into the biosphere and contaminating every other oil source would be, no pun intended, unwell.

Ptchd• 4 years ago

doesn't pumping large volumes of liquids into the earth like this lead to all sorts of unintended consequences as well?

Is it better to have the large voids that were created when oïl was extracted?

skeeter2020• 4 years ago

This is not what an oil well looks like, and the article doesn't help with phrasing like "depleted cavern". An oil well is not a big cave filled with black, bubbling oil and a big "straw" poked into it. The hydrocarbons are held in the porosity of the rock, and pressures (both natural and introduced) force them to the wellbore. A very poor sponge is a better visible analogy, but even that over-represents the voids.

thinkcontext4• 4 years ago

That's what fracking is. It doesn't sound like this new company would be pumping anywhere near as much water, under as much pressure or with as toxic a mix.

rklaehn• 4 years ago

I don't get the strong opposition to it. Yes, CO2 is a byproduct. And yes, that CO2 might leak out of the wells. But it would still be much better than the status quo, which is hydrogen from fossil fuels, with the CO2 being emitted 100%.

Hydrogen is very much needed for chemical synthesis (ammonia for fertiliser), and can also be used to make steel. Using this would be much better than blue hydrogen. A good pragmatic solution until we have green hydrogen.

lazide• 4 years ago

This hydrogen is from the fossil fuel underground, correct?

The CO2 still is getting emitted in this plan, near as I can tell?

kolinko2• 4 years ago

This produces the same amount of co2 as the regular hydrogen generated from fossil fuels.p, unless they lock it underground permamently.

Schroedingersat• 4 years ago

Capturing the CO2 from doing this is the same lie as capturing fugitive methane.

The line is stop drilling, digging and cutting.

kamray239• 4 years ago

But it would still be much better than the status quo, which is hydrogen from fossil fuels, with the CO2 being emitted 100%.

This produces the same amount. Actually, steam reforming is more efficient energy-wise, consuming 206 kJ/mol instead of the 253 kJ/mol this ideally consumes. Since the microbes are not being fed electricity, that comes out of the same fossil fuels, giving us an even worse, actually much worse, carbon / hydrogen ratio. The emissions are higher and storing the gas is no easier or harder than with ordinary SMR from natural gas or oil. We absolutely can and do store the CO from SMR, consuming many times the energy stored in the hydrogen coming out.

It's really no solution at all and just a worse, less efficient version of hydrogen from fossil fuels. No matter how you seal it, nowhere close to the produced amount of CO₂ can fit in the well and it will nearly in its entirety just find alternative routes out. It's a waste of time, mostly.

techdragon• 4 years ago

Just going to say it, anyone using the mystery colour labels in their comments here, comes off to me (and I suspect others) as combinations of joking, obfuscating and even a little condescending since I’m familiar with the use of this sort of linguistic abstraction as a mechanism for gatekeeping, limiting the size of the audience that can speak to those that have kept up with current shibboleths.

Blue, black, green, grey, white, translucent, gold, purple polka dot… this is a stupid way to name things…

If it’s hydrogen derived from oil by industrial petrochemical processes like steam reforming or catalytic cracking, can we just use these terms… it’s not like we’re trying to explain which pump handles to fill up a car with, we’re talking about issues with a proposed concept and obfuscation of what that concept truly is and what it’s competing against, with cutesy colours labels… frankly just puts me off the entire hydrogen industry …

Hydrogen is pretty easy to get ahold of chemically speaking because it’s everywhere. If we need to differentiate let’s just use the additional nouns necessary. “Hydrogen from Electrolysis powered by Carbon Neutral electricity” and “Hydrogen by thermochemical decomposition of organic waste powered by Carbon Neutral fuels” are ecologically better than “Hydrogen from Electrolysis powered by Coal” and “Hydrogen captured as a waste gas from existing oil refineries, with no other effort to reduce Carbon emissions“

I don’t normally come across a HN thread that reads so “cliquey” outside of the crypto community stuff… seeing this sort of stuff about Hydrogen is just weird.

plaguepilled• 4 years ago

Blame marketing teams + policy teams. They're the ones that push this terminology.

RhodesianHunter• 4 years ago

Or just people who prefer to use one simple word rather than a mouthful of technical ones.

kolinko2• 4 years ago

The reason for this taxonomy is the same reason you use consts instead of plain numbers in computer code. You change the definition of “green” in just one place when someone invents a new loophole, or someone invents a new green method of obtaining sustainable hydrogen.

Also, the descriptions would be too long in some cases. To be green, according to the new taxonomy, it’s not enough for hydrogen to be generated using renewables. It has to be generated by renewables built specifically for this purpose, and from water that is not drinking water - so that we don’t drain lakes and rivers to produce it.

Now, gold hydrogen is just a marketing gimmick. It’s just brown or black, unless they store generated co2 safely and permamently - then it can become green.

kamray239• 4 years ago

I don’t normally come across a HN thread that reads so “cliquey” outside of the crypto community stuff… seeing this sort of stuff about Hydrogen is just weird.

Really. Hydrogen in general is just a weird prospect. Hydrogen from SMR of natural gas has like way higher emissions than just burning natural gas, and massively higher emissions than just using diesel. It has exactly zero uses energy-wise other than as a medium for moving a ridiculous amount of energy quickly. Makes it real nice in things like rocketry and real useless for anything else. The most efficient way to produce it is by using electricity and water, which can make a no-emissions solution for that one niche. If you use gas or oil for electricity, reforming is technically slightly more efficient. In any case, it's always worse than fossil fuels by themselves, unless you use green energy. And cramming greenhouse gases underground doesn't make the situation any better, which everybody knows but for some reason pretends is not true. Digging tunnels and caves and building facilities to store monoxide in is far worse than just burning fossil fuels as fuel in the first place. This is a fairly doomed industry, because it has no point in an environmentally sustainable future.

FreeFull• 4 years ago

While I agree that hydrogen for electricity generation/storage doesn't really make sense, there are some industries that either can use or must use large amounts of hydrogen for chemical purposes. For example, the production of ammonia for fertiliser needs hydrogen, and refining metals from ore can use hydrogen.

legulere2• 4 years ago

Hydrogen already is needed today in some processes and some processes can only be made clean with clean hydrogen.

The hydrogen ladder offers a good overview of where hydrogen makes sense and where it doesn’t: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/clean-hydrogen-ladder-v40-mic...

For me methane pyrolysis from biogas seems like the most realistic way of carbon capture (while also producing hydrogen).

sandworm101• 4 years ago

Heating, specifically in the north.

Hydrogen has potential to replace natural gas in area that need serious heating. Where I am standing it is currently very cold, days are short, and the sun is very low on the horizon. Electric heating is possible, but without any green power sources nearby that just means more burning fossil fuels, a horrible conversion of energy. And the electrical infrastructure needed to move sufficient power from sunny/windy areas to heat homes in the north would be immense. But "green" hydrogen shipped over the existing natural gas infrastructure could work. So in those circumstances where you need to move energy for purposes of heating, hydrogen has its place.

jmyeet• 4 years ago

This is silly.

We use color to describe non-color things all the way from fundamental physics (eg quark "color") to emotional metaphors (eg feeling blue, seeing red, green with envy, yellow as a substitute for being a candidate, white for both rage and fear). We use color for political leanings (eg red states, blue states, green parties)

We use color for when we have no other language or concept that might apply (eg color and spin for particles) but we also use it as a form of abstraction. We can label something with a particular color because it shares some essential qualities without necessarily understanding all those properties or verbosely enumerating all those properties. Those meanings can change over time.

Jargon can be useful and important. Don't be a Literal or Gatekeeper Andy.

jonplackett2• 4 years ago

If this produces co2, then doesn’t this make the entire case for hydrogen pointless?

a3w2• 4 years ago

It does produce CO2. They just hope to store or contain it. Please don't. You can generate the H2 once. We need the infrastructure to produce our worldwide energy demand regeneratively anyway, so why take this risk?

jojobas2• 4 years ago

Isn't there enough energy in hydrocarbons to do (C₂H)ₙ-> H₂ + H₂O + C?

thombat• 4 years ago

Where did the oxygen come from? Presumably can't be too readily available to avoid heading straight to a second water & carbon monoxide.

nightfly• 4 years ago

This isn't the only way to generate/extract hydrogen

jonplackett2• 4 years ago

Sorry I just meant isn’t it pointless - in this case

linuxftw• 4 years ago

No. Not every energy innovation is concerned with CO2 production. This is a way to extract more energy from the earth.

I expect the vast, vast majority of our energy is going to be derived from fossil fuels for the next 2-300 years.

habibur• 4 years ago

The numbers :

    Their cost : $1 / kg of H.
    Other's cost : $1.5 / kg on average.
    1 kg H is equivalent to 1 gallon of petroleum fuel in energy.

aritmo• 4 years ago

'Gold hydrogen'? Sounds like the marketing term 'clean coal'.

quickthrower2• 4 years ago

An innovative energy tech that increases co2 emissions is not that exciting. Kind of hope it is not economical for this reason. Unless they can trap the co2 it but not sure how?

jeroenhd• 4 years ago

Stuff like this is why the fossil fuel industry keeps pushing for hydrogen rather than solar + batteries as a replacement for the current fuel system.

Hydrogen can be created cleanly, but once the infrastructure is in place, the cheapest and most profitable sources will all be fossil fuel sites, depleted or otherwise.

I'm glad electric cars are already taking off. Hydrogen may have a future for storage for excess renewable energy eventually, but as a simple replacement for gas tanks it's simply dangerous.

stuaxo• 4 years ago

"Hydrogen, which releases zero carbon emissions"

Except the article already stated the Co2 is already emitted as part of the process of breaking down these hydrocarbons (club being in their name) -

"microbes began breaking down the residual oil hydrocarbons in there—dregs that would be unprofitable to extract—to generate hydrogen and CO2."

elil17• 4 years ago

It will be important to prevent the CO2 byproduct from leaking into the atmosphere and contributing to climate change, however. Cemvita Factory argues that it can keep the CO2 locked underground, use other microbes to fix it somehow, or find commercial uses for the greenhouse gas… Exactly what solution Cemvita would use in each location—and how successfully—isn’t yet known.

Seems like a bit of a dealbreaker to me. CO2 storage is a huge unsolved problem. This is about as close to a climate friendly solution as saying “we’ll do traditional hydrogen and put the CO2 somewhere.” Theoretically fine but not a practical idea at the moment.

Kerbonut• 4 years ago

We need to scale up graphene from co2

thinkcontext4• 4 years ago

Proton Technologies (mentioned in the article) claims to solve the problem by using a membrane that only lets hydrogen pass through. That way all the co2 just stays in the well.

jonstewart• 4 years ago

More oil company-funded hydrogen distractions.

‘Gold hydrogen’ is an untapped resource in depleted oil wells

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