What is the benefit of underground “white hydrogen”, and will it lead to an energy revolution?

“They started looking for white hydrogen deposits all over the world,” physical chemist Gábor Lenti told Qubit after his presentation at the Hungarian Science Festival on Wednesday evening, in which he talked about the possibility of using hydrogen extracted from the Earth’s surface. Power holder and its advantages.

According to the director of the Institute of Chemistry at the University of Pécs during the recent period France And also at the foot of the Pyrenees Mountains in Spain they found Deposits containing a significant amount of hydrogen are below the surface, but extraction of the latter is not currently permitted under Spanish mining laws.

According to the expert who is researching possible ways to use hydrogen at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the technology is available, and only economic and legal considerations limit the use of hydrogen at a higher rate than it is currently. Below, in the modern building of the Humanities Research Centre, he spent much of his lecture in front of nearly 30 people interested in discussing regulatory issues related to use and extraction.

The EU climate policy decision, according to which cars emitting carbon dioxide cannot be sold from 2035, is a major legal change, but as the Presidential Committee on Sustainable Development of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences said in October about battery factories A statement was made As also covered, it’s not at all certain that electric cars will dominate transportation in a decade or two. According to the researcher, there is a tendency to invest more and more significant resources in developing hydrogen infrastructure.

The US Department of Energy invested $7 billion in October AnnounceOf which seven regional hydrogen centers will be established to accelerate the spread of clean hydrogen. According to plans, the H2Hubs will collectively produce three million tons of hydrogen per year with almost zero emissions. Meanwhile, the European Union countries Agreed this year That by 2030 there will be a hydrogen well in every major city and every 200 kilometers along the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T). If this is actually achieved, according to the researcher, we will be able to visit at least a dozen hydrogen wells in Hungary within 7 years.

Why are there no hydrogen cars on the roads yet?

Hydrogen vehicles, such as fuel cells Toyota Mirai The researcher said that the main obstacle to its spread today is the lack of a place to refuel hydrogen fuel, which the European Union initiative can change. In contrast to electric charging, refueling hydrogen-powered cars takes a similar amount of time as today’s gasoline or diesel cars: the filling station pumps fuel into the tank at 700 times more atmospheric pressure, or 70 MPa. Although, according to the researcher, hydrogen has real risks, we are partly accustomed to this with natural gas. At the same time, he added, one of the characteristics of hydrogen is that its leakage can lead to heating and inflammation, which can cause serious problems.

Today, hydrogen can be used in fuel cells and internal combustion engine vehicles that generate electricity and use it to drive an electric motor. According to Lenti, the most important factor of these is efficiency, which favors the fuel cell for low and medium power, and the internal combustion engine for higher power. Meanwhile, the disadvantage of the fuel cell is the large need for cooling and reduced efficiency as the temperature rises: “Thermodynamics are harsh,” the researcher said.

But where do we get fillable hydrogen? The element is present in large quantities in hydrocarbons and water. The so-called was invented to show how polluting energy sources are used for their production Hydrogen rainbowThe black color indicates the most polluting gas that is produced with the help of coal, the green color indicates that it is generated by renewable energy sources, and the white color indicates that it is extracted from under the surface of the earth. Lenti had previously said that hydrogen is not an essential energy source and cannot truly be extracted, but in recent years, as CNN recently reported on hydrogen deposits in northern France Summarized in his articleturns out it was.

The story of this goes back decades, when a well in Mali, in a town called Bourakibogo, unexpectedly caught fire after a worker lit a cigarette nearby. Then in 2011, an oil and gas company opened up the sealed well and found that the gas it released was 98 percent hydrogen.

Beneath the surface, as was in Scientific Reports this year Published study He explains that there is a much larger hydrogen reserve than has been extracted so far for the purpose of supplying the village with electricity. According to Lente, even if a hydrogen content of this proportion cannot be expected elsewhere, natural gas deposits containing hydrogen are being investigated in several countries, including Brazil or Oman, and it is possible to find hydrogen in geological layers in one Or two. Places in Hungary.

Where will the first hydrogen mine be?

United States Geological Survey (USGS) according to There may be enough natural hydrogen below the surface to cover global consumption for thousands of years. Lenti said in his presentation that if white hydrogen deposits could be exploited, it could increase hydrogen’s efficiency as an energy carrier and even benefit internal combustion engines, because fuel cells, by contrast, need cleaner, impurity-free hydrogen. .

Although hydrogen is not a direct greenhouse gas, it can change the amount of other greenhouse gases through chemical reactions, so a study was published this summer in the journal Communications Earth & Environment According to research In order to benefit from hydrogen, attention must be paid to reducing its leakage.

In response to our question, Lenti said that the production of natural gas containing hydrogen is perhaps the most advanced in Australia. In his presentation, he also mentioned that the South Australian Government had recently introduced a new bill Presenter To the state parliament, which would simplify the establishment of hydrogen and other renewable energy projects. In addition, the US Department of Energy recently provided $20 million to explore geological hydrogen deposits.

As an industrial energy source, “to my knowledge, hydrogen is not used in large quantities at the moment, but there are industrial processes in which a significant amount of hydrogen is used,” Lenti told Qubit, and according to him, when it was used in connection with long-term energy storage Long term, hydrogen is one option that can be taken seriously.

In addition to mining, according to the chemist, it may also make sense to produce hydrogen from renewable energy sources through the electrolysis of water for the purpose of energy storage, when the grid will not be able to absorb the excess energy produced by the grid. Solar panels, so that it is beneficial to the product. According to him, the same can be done with nuclear power plants that operate continuously, if the energy they produce is not needed in the grid.

The researcher’s full presentation can be viewed here:

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