- A new method has been developed to extract hydrogen directly from natural gas fields by injecting steam, a catalyst, and oxygen, resulting in hydrogen and carbon monoxide that can be separated while trapping carbon emissions underground.
- This breakthrough in blue hydrogen production offers a potential solution to the challenges of green hydrogen, which requires diverting renewable energy and faces high production costs.
- The scientists behind this technology aim to expand testing and believe their method can significantly impact the energy sector by providing a more efficient and low-emissions way to produce hydrogen.
Many thought that green hydrogen would be a silver bullet for decarbonization, particularly in hard-to-abate industries. But the green hydrogen revolution has not yet materialized as the fuel’s production remains expensive and economically inefficient. But a new breakthrough in hydrogen harvesting could put the sector back on track for major industry disruption.
Green hydrogen is lauded as a potential game-changer for clean energy because it can be combusted at high heat like fossil fuels to power sectors like steelmaking, shipping, and transport. But unlike fossil fuels, when hydrogen burns it leaves behind nothing but water vapor. Hydrogen is already widely used in industrial applications worldwide, but it is produced using fossil fuels. This type is known as gray hydrogen. Green hydrogen is produced using purely clean energies. And some consider hydrogen made using natural gas to be in its own category, calling it blue hydrogen, as it is cleaner than gray hydrogen but is still associated with greenhouse gas emissions.
And a new breakthrough may be poised to put blue hydrogen on the map in a major way, while also reducing the sector’s emissions. A group of Russian scientists has found a way to extract hydrogen out of natural gas fields, which are extremely rich in hydrocarbons, while leaving carbon emissions trapped underground. The method, pioneered by Moscow’s Skoltech, can produce hydrogen directly in gas fields with an efficiency level of 45%. To achieve this, the researchers injected steam and a catalyst into a gas well, followed by oxygen to create combustion. The result is “a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide, from which hydrogen can be efficiently separated.”
“The carbon dioxide formed from the carbon monoxide remains in the reservoir and does not contribute to the greenhouse effect,” SciTechDaily reports. “At the final stage, hydrogen is extracted from the well through a membrane that blocks other combustion products, leaving the carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide permanently trapped underground.”
If the method is indeed as “green” as the scientific team contends, it could be a major step forward for the hydrogen industry as well as the global decarbonization movement. It would solve a major issue in the sector’s development, as it doesn’t require renewable energy to be diverted to hydrogen production. A 2022 report from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) warned that extensive use of hydrogen “may not be in line with the requirements of a decarbonised world” as green hydrogen “requires dedicated renewable energy that could be used for other end uses.” Low-emissions hydrogen production that does not require such energy resources could therefore be a game-changer.
For this and other key reasons, including high production costs and a lack of sufficiently supportive policy measures, green hydrogen ambitions have more or less fizzled out in recent years. In 2023, less than one tenth of planned green hydrogen projects were actually carried out. Indeed, “only 7% of global capacity announcements finished on schedule,” according to a report, “The green hydrogen ambition and implementation gap“, which tracked 190 projects over 3 years.
The Skoltech technology wouldn’t technically turn around what may be the terminal decline of green hydrogen implementation, but could introduce low-emissions blue hydrogen in a revolutionary way. The research is still in its early stages, but the scientists hope to expand their testing soon, and are confident that their breakthrough will yield meaningful results for the energy sector.
“All the stages of the process are based on well-established technologies that have not previously been adapted for hydrogen production from real gas reservoirs,” said Elena Mukhina, project leader and senior research scientist at Skoltech Petroleum. “We have demonstrated that our approach can help convert hydrocarbons into “green” fuels in the field environment with an efficiency of up to 45%. In the future, we plan to test our method in real gas fields.”
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Breakthrough-Technology-Extracts-Hydrogen-from-Natural-Gas-Wells.amp.html
