Low-cost, clean hydrogen from underground oil fires could kill off green H2 sector
The process now being real-world tested by a Canadian start-up could produce vast amounts of hydrogen up to ten times more cheaply than existing methods
Real-world testing has now begun on Proton Technologies’ “Hygenic Earth Energy” (HEE) concept, and if all goes to plan, the technology could revolutionise the global energy industry, potentially killing off the nascent renewables-based green hydrogen industry and providing a method of harnessing huge amounts of “low-cost, high profit, zero emissions” energy from existing oil fields without any carbon emissions.
The concept is remarkably simple, even if it sounds dangerously insane.
The company says it will eventually produce this clean hydrogen for $0.10-0.50 per kilogram. This would be a massive cost reduction for the versatile clean-burning fuel.
The low cost of Proton’s hydrogen is partly due to the economies of scale — vast quantities of the gas could be extracted cheaply from each oil or gas reservoir or coal bed, and partly because it can take advantage of hydrocarbons that are otherwise uneconomic to extract — such as depleted or abandoned oil & gas reservoirs — which would therefore be cheap to buy.
“In broad terms, about 70% of oil remains in the ground after production, because it is inaccessible or uneconomic to recover. In natural gas reserves about 20% is left behind,” the company points out. “For many abandoned or declining reservoirs, HEE becomes a ‘phoenix’ solution, reviving local industry and producing unexpected value from sunk costs.
“The transition to HEE can be rapid since so much infrastructure is in place, and so many reservoirs are surveyed and accessible.”
“Globally, the resource base for heavy oil is several times larger than that of conventional oil. Thus, if HEE can yield clean energy — with virtually zero greenhouse-gas emissions — from heavy oil reserves, the impact is significant on both the world economy and environment,” the company states. “The ideal target for HEE in heavy oil reservoirs would be reservoirs with greater than 40% water saturation. At present, these reservoirs are considered inaccessible. But for HEE, the high water saturation becomes an advantage.”
Nevertheless, Proton hopes to produce commercial amounts of hydrogen from the Superb field in the coming months.
Proton chief executive Grant Strem claims that the Calgary-based company’s process could produce enough hydrogen from just the heavy-oil fields in the Canadian province of Alberta to “supply Canada's entire electricity requirements for 330 years”.
“The economics and the environmental implications [will] make people look very hard at whether they want to continue conventional oil production,” he told a geochemical conference last year.
But just how feasible is Proton’s plan?
And Geoffrey Maitland, a chemical engineer at Imperial College London, added: “This chemistry is well-proven at the surface. The challenge is controlling these processes several kilometres underground.”
The reason why the Proton technology could be so important is that clean hydrogen (produced without greenhouse-gas emissions) can play a vital role in decarbonizing the world’s energy system.
Hydrogen is a clean-burning fuel that can generate electricity (using fuel cells or modified gas turbines); power vehicles — notably long-distance lorries, trains and ships; produce sufficient heat to be an eventual replacement for natural gas — and even use existing gas networks; provide the high-temperature heat required for industrial processes such as cement and steel production; and also be used as the base ingredient for carbon-neutral synthetic aviation fuel.
Today, about 70 million tonnes of hydrogen is produced annually — with 95-99% of it produced from methane and coal. More than half of this hydrogen is used in oil refining, with about 42% used as a base ingredient for ammonia fertiliser production, according to the IEA.
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