Natural hydrogen exploration in Australia – state of knowledge and presentation of a case study
Emanuelle Frery A * , Laurent Langhi A and Jelena Markov AA CSIRO Energy, 26 Dick Perry Avenue, Kensington, WA 6151, Australia.
The APPEA Journal 62(1) 223-234 https://doi.org/10.1071/AJ21171
Submitted: 13 December 2021 Accepted: 11 January 2022 Published: 13 May 2022
© 2022 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing on behalf of APPEA.
Abstract
Hydrogen will play a major role in Australia’s transition to a net zero emissions energy future. The hydrogen industry and technology are scaling up with hydrogen produced via two pathways, thermochemical and electrochemical, that involve the use of fossil fuel feedstock or the use of an electrical current to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. Exploration for and production of natural hydrogen is one of the most promising ways to get large quantities of green hydrogen cheaper than the ‘blue’ hydrogen produced from methane. Some predictions from this growing industry even estimate that the production of natural hydrogen can quickly become economically viable. We propose to review the state of knowledge of natural hydrogen exploration and production in the world and focus on the exploration of the Australian natural seeps in the frame of the incredible exploration rush we are currently experiencing. Surface emanations often referred to as ‘fairy circles’ are often associated with high hydrogen soil-gas measurement and have been described in numerous countries. In the frame of our research, we recently showed that similar hyrdrogen-emitting structures are present in Australia. New regional scale soil-gas measurements reveal persistent hydrogen concentration along the Darling Fault, in the Perth Basin and on the Yilgarn Craton. Those geological settings promote processes such as deep serpentinisation of ultramafic rocks as potential hydrogen sources that are of massive potential economic value. We review the results of different techniques to explore and quantify the presence of natural hydrogen leakage.
Keywords: fluid and gas leakage, hydrogen seeps, natural hydrogen exploration, Perth Basin, renewable, structural geology, Yilgarn Craton.
Emanuelle Frery is a Senior Research Scientist with expertise in multidisciplinary projects. She loves to synthesise work from different disciplines and apply her expertise in structural geology to comprehensive assessments of energy production impact on groundwater systems and the environment. She is passionate about fluid and gas circulation along natural faults and the impact of those circulations on the seismic cycle. She works with a multi-scale approach, from fieldwork to laboratory analyses and to numerical modelling. She acquired a worldwide academic expertise in this field with a PhD thesis on the circulation recorded in the well-known red sandstone of the Colorado Plateau and her involvement in IODP research. Before joining CSIRO, she also worked in the oil and gas industry as a seismic interpreter and a petroleum system analyst. |
Laurent Langhi holds a MSc and a PhD in geology and geophysics from Lausanne University in Switzerland. Laurent worked as a researcher at UWA and as an explorationist in the industry for a few years before joining CSIRO in 2006. He is primarily working on subsurface modelling and flow characterisation for CCS, conventional and unconventional resources. He is a Principal Researcher and holds the position of Research Team Leader and previously Group Leader in the CSIRO Energy Business Unit. |
Jelena Markov is a geophysicist with a keen interest in innovation and new technology development with application to mineral and oil & gas exploration. Along with her academic qualifications, she has industry experience in the acquisition, processing and interpretation of potential field data. This experience includes working on several exploration projects in Australia, and experience working internationally. She has been involved in the development of methods and workflows for edge enhancement, quantitative interpretation and 2D and 3D modelling of magnetic and gravity data. |
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