First of Its Kind:Vast Reservoirs of Clean Hydrogen Gas

[Alexander Of Assyria]

https://hydrogen-central.com/first-kind-discovery-mali-vast-reservoirs-clean-hydrogen-gas/


First of its kind discovery in mali: vast reservoirs of clean hydrogen gas.

In the beautiful West African country of Mali, a huge discovery has a town drawing a flammable gas from the earth that produces loads of electricity without CO2 emissions.

The town called Bourakébougou was prospected by Malian energy entrepreneur Aliou Diallo, who believed the mysterious gas which in the daytime shone with a blue color like sparkling ocean water, and at night like golden dust, could represent a fortune.

…….

Fascinating. Game changer!? No one was looking before, all the capital went into drilling for fossil fuels.

…….

In 2018, a science team published a paper on the Bourakébougou hydrogen well, which concluded from evidence obtained from a dozen exploratory wells in the vicinity that it was “possible to confirm the presence of an extensive hydrogen field featuring at least five stacked reservoir intervals containing significant hydrogen that cover an estimated area well superior to 8 km in diameter.”

Furthermore, the study found that the current estimate of its exploitation price is much cheaper than manufactured hydrogen, either from fossil fuels or from electrolysis.

[EYESORE 9001]

1. The people of Mail will probably regret that energy entrepreneurs have discovered this gas

It seldom helps people when resources are found beneath their feet. The wealth goes straight to the top, often to autocratic regimes who use that wealth to further oppress their people.

[Think. Again.]

2. So true...

...I certainly hope the people of that town are prepared for the exploitation attempts the profiteers will make.

[Alexander Of Assyria]

3. Helped America and many other nations prosper a lot when oil was discovered!

No reason why Africans cant do same with Green Gold…and save the planet from the pollution of the industrialized West as a byproduct.

Your welcome!

Africans can handle it, believing or hoping otherwise is…you know…

[brush]

5. I'll finish it for you...racist. Why do so many jump straight to that?

[MarineCombatEngineer]

7. No I don't know,

why don't you tell us?

BTW, it wasn't only the west with the pollution, it was also China, Russia, India, etc, but you won't mention them because otherwise............you know..........

[TexasTowelie]

17. Yeah, we will never get the complete story.

Hydrogen that is used in vehicles must be compressed which requires energy. A lone hydrogen well isn't sufficient to supply the entire world so to obtain additional hydrogen requires electrolysis which is also energy intensive. While it may provide some local use, this isn't a large enough discovery to alter the energy equation or the need for fossil fuels.

China and India have also been riding the coattails of US defense policy for decades as they obtained crude oil from the Middle East without contributing anything financially or providing security for that benefit. So who is the bad guy here--it seems like the West has contributed to keeping the oil flowing while Asia did little to nothing.

Look out Mali, China and Russia are coming to exploit you.

[EYESORE 9001]

9. You're welcome

[MusicLikeDirt]

13. The legacy of colonialism still dogs many African nations?

YMMV

[TexasTowelie]

18. A narrative that at times should be ignored.

This is one of them.

Welcome to DU!

[Silent3]

15. It's the exception, not the rule, when the benefits of natural resources create broad prosperity...

...rather than benefiting just a narrow class of corrupt profiteers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse

[Farmer-Rick]

19. Exactly

What indigenous populations were made prosperous after a capitalist organization found out they had natural resources to exploit?

Capitalism never ever spreads the wealth. The reason some Americans are in comfortable situations is that America is/was the center of capitalism, after the British Empire was torn apart.

We took from South America, Africa and other continents and brought the wealth to the US. Plus, the Nazis wiped out much of the means of production of Europe during WWII and left the continent open to American competition.

[Caliman73]

25. Certainly they can handle it, if left to their own devices... they won't be.

That is the problem, and the "otherwise is...you know..." is precisely why US, British, Russian, and other Colonial powers will try to exploit Mali and their hydrogen under the auspices of, "helping".

Race as a concept, especially the distinction between Black and White was a European (Portugal) invention specifically used to justify the Slave Trade. It has been used historically and today to maintain large swaths of people in poverty while enriching a few.

Think about American History, specifically as related to Indigenous people. As mineral wealth was found on the typically barren pieces of land that were sectioned off to them by Treaty with the US Government, what would happen? Were the Navajo richly compensated when uranium was found on their land? Or, was the treaty ripped up and the group "relocated" to another barren patch of land?

To think that the history of African nations is similar to what happened in the United States when Oil was discovered is... you know... kind of naive.

[aggiesal]

14. I was going to say ...

The U.S. will exploit it in 3 ... 2 ... 1 ...

[TexasTowelie]

20. Not so likely.

The Wagner group is in Mali and the US has imposed sanctions on some government officials in the junta that were active in the coup. They are more likely to be exploited by either Russia or China since Mali joined the Belt & Road Initiative in 2019.

[LiberalArkie]

16. All one has to do is look how the helpful oil and gas people were to the native Americans in

Oklahoma back in the 1920's and 30's

[Think. Again.]

4. I'm very curious...

...about natural H2.

Obviously, it's a thing, but how abundant?

What I'm really curious about is if the natural process that produces it can be easily replicated to produce H2 in production plants?

[SpamWyzer]

6. I think

the processes that produce it are a function of eons of geologic decomposition in conjunction with hydrologically fueled erosion.
Hydrogen production from natural gas and heavier hydrocarbons is achieved by partial oxidation. A fuel-air or fuel-oxygen mixture is partially combusted, resulting in a hydrogen- and carbon monoxide-rich syngas. More hydrogen and carbon dioxide are then obtained from carbon monoxide (and water) via the water-gas shift reaction. So finding huge underground reservoirs is a very good thing, managing them will be a challenge. It is thought Earth contains numerous deposits of hydrogen gas in subterranean chambers.

https://www.science.org/content/article/hidden-hydrogen-earth-may-hold-vast-stores-renewable-carbon-free-fuel

[Alexander Of Assyria]

23. Thank you for that! Now I am puzzled why the public does not hear more about this?

Exploring the topic for first time myself!

Many questions…why isn’t there much much more exploration? Is it just a not viable commercial fantasy?

Is Toyota correct?

[honest.abe]

8. I'm also curious about reports that H2 is being generated continuously in these wells.

Apparently in some of the wells in Mali the pressure remained the same even though they were tapping the gas daily for various uses.

Not sure how quickly it’s being produced but still quite remarkable.

[Think. Again.]

10. I've read that also...

...which makes me think the process might be replicable.

[honest.abe]

11. Yes.

Just the fact it won’t take millions of years is promising.

[world wide wally]

12. Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the Universe

[Silent3]

22. Which makes it all the more ironic that free hydrogen is so rare on Earth

What little hydrogen we have is nearly all bound up in water and other chemical compounds, meaning we have to expend energy to extract it. Only free hydrogen can be considered a true energy source, the rest being a mere energy carrier, a way to transport energy generated by other means.

If we did have abundant free hydrogen I'd then have to wonder how much of that we could burn before, instead of excess carbon dioxide being a problem, oxygen depletion became a problem.

Since the CO₂ problem is a matter of parts-per-million changes, a similar scale effect on oxygen concentration would be negligible for a very long time.

[Alexander Of Assyria]

24. Not sure if it's rare, or it just hasn't not been explored, as fossil fuels were/are abundant and

easily extractable and economically…, especially when environmental factors were never factored in for hundreds of years of the Western and Northern Industrial Revolution.

Seek vigorously!…as vigorous as oil and gas and now lithium and cobalt, maybe we will find what potentially could be the most valuable resource on the planet.

Worth a try!

[Hortensis]

21. Natural hydrogen's become a big new frontier; as said, believed to exist

in deposits around the planet, like fossil deposits but not the same places. Some believe it may also be renewable.

USGS: Potential For Geologic Hydrogen for Next-Generation Energy: The smallest element may hold big promise for clean energy

A previously overlooked, potential geologic source of energy could increase the renewability and lower the carbon footprint of our nation’s energy portfolio: natural hydrogen.

... “Using a conservative range of input values, the model predicts a mean volume of hydrogen that could supply the projected global hydrogen demand for thousands of years,” Ellis said.

However, he quickly cautions, “We have to be very careful in interpreting this number, though. Based on what we know about the distribution of petroleum and other gases in the subsurface, most of this hydrogen is probably inaccessible." In other words, hydrogen supplies are too deeply buried, or too far offshore, or in accumulations that are too small, making it highly unlikely they could ever be economically recovered.

The good news is, if even a small fraction of this estimated volume could be recovered, there would likely be enough hydrogen across all the global deposits to last for hundreds of years. Ellis is convinced that the amount of hydrogen in the Earth’s interior could potentially constitute a primary energy resource.

“The key,” he said, “is to understand if hydrogen exists in significant accumulations that can be economically accessed, and if so, how to find these resources.”

https://www.usgs.gov/news/featured-story/potential-geologic-hydrogen-next-generation-energy

Btw, I didn't count all the posts that leaped to negative dismissals, derailings to colonialism, corruption, death, assumption that this great resource must be bad news for Mali. But I swear, if that kind of attitude were applied to our own kitchens, some'd be forced to search for food elsewhere or go hungry.

[hunter]

26. This may be a local and very limited phenomena...

... primarily of interest to geologists and the people benefiting from the electricity generated.

Natural hydrogen is not likely to "save the world"

I tend to read most stories like this as propaganda meant to make us all feel optimistic about the future so that we'll continue merrily on our way, business as usual.

It's a false hope. Business as usual will be the end of us. Fossil fuels are destroying the natural environment as we've known it and this will probably lead to the collapse of our world civilization. As we accelerate down this highway to hell we probably missed the last off ramp to a sustainable world economy fifty years ago.

In general the people selling hydrogen are, knowingly or not, manufacturing greenwash for the filthy natural gas industry. Most hydrogen is made from natural gas and nothing will change.

I do think humans will adapt but even that will become impossible if we continue to burn fossil fuels as if there's no tomorrow.

Back in the 'sixties my mom bought me a subscription to Popular Science and I've been reading about "energy breakthroughs" in increasingly sophisticated journals ever since.

Aside from nuclear power, most of these energy breakthroughs have been disappointing.

The search for more sites like the one in Mali has been going on for more than a decade.

Here's a more science oriented article about the hydrogen wells in Mali:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-38977-y

It's not light reading.