Phys.org December 16, 2024
Geologic hydrogen could be a low-carbon primary energy resource; however, the magnitude of Earth’s subsurface hydrogen has not yet been assessed. Researchers at the US Geological Survey combined information from geologic analogs to construct a mass balance model to predict resource potential. Stochastic model results predicted a wide range of values for the potential in-place hydrogen resource with the most probable value of ~5.6 × 106 Mt. Although most of this hydrogen was likely to be impractical to recover, a small fraction (e.g., 1 × 105 Mt) would supply the projected hydrogen needed to reach net-zero carbon emissions for ~200 years. According to the researchers hydrogen contained more energy (~1.4 × 1016 MJ) than all proven natural gas reserves on Earth (~8.4 × 1015 MJ), and their results demonstrated that further research into understanding the potential for geologic hydrogen resources is merited… read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Conceptual model of geologic hydrogen resources. Credit: Science Advances, 13 Dec 2024, Vol 10, Issue 50