Natural Hydrogen

News: A growing number of sizable companies, from mining giants to energy majors, are embracing the hype for natural hydrogen.

About Natural Hydrogen

• It refers to hydrogen gas that is generated and found naturally in the earth’s crust or atmosphere, rather than being produced artificially through industrial processes.
• It is also called white/gold/geological hydrogen, to distinguish it from “green” (from renewables), “blue” (from natural gas with carbon capture), or “grey” (from fossil fuels) hydrogen.

• Production: It is produced by processes such as –
  • Serpentinisation – It is a geological process where ultramafic rocks are altered by water and heat, transforming them into serpentinite. This process also releases hydrogen gas.
  • Radiolysis of water by radioactive rocks
  • From organic matter at depth.
• Current reserves: The total size of worldwide natural hydrogen reserves is still poorly known because of a lack of concentrated exploration. But still some of the Hydrogen reserves catalogued globally include-
  • Australia (Eyre Peninsula and Kangaroo Island),
  • United States (Kansas, Nebraska)
  • France (Lorraine region)
  • Spain, Albania, Colombia, South Korea, and Canada
  • Mosselle region: A massive 46-million-ton natural hydrogen reserve discovered here. It is a river valley spanning north-eastern France, south-western Germany, and eastern Luxembourg.
• In India: The natural hydrogen potential is quite promising because of the existence of –
  • Favourable geological structures like hard rock formations of diverse ultramafic/mafic and basaltic assemblages
  • Andaman and Himalayan ophiolite complexes
  • Greenstone volcanic-sedimentary sequences in cratons (Dharwar, Singhbhum)
  • Sedimentary basis (for example, in Vindhyan, Cuddapah, Gondwana and Chhattisgarh)
  • Basement rocks with fractures
  • Areas with active hydrothermal systems e.g. hot springs.