A New Clean Hydrogen Option: Make It Underground |
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Clean hydrogen has been touted for years as a promising, though elusive, fuel for non-polluting cars and trucks. But the biggest impact of finding a source of hydrogen that’s not made from splitting natural gas would be to lower the carbon-intensity of industries that are the biggest hydrogen users: chemical manufacturers, oil refineries, steel makers and fertilizer plants.
So-called green hydrogen, made using just water and renewable power, is one option, but it isn’t cheap enough to replace traditional industrial hydrogen. Companies like Koloma are pursuing geologic hydrogen – pockets of the element that are generated underground – that it could drill for, using skills honed in the oil and gas industry. The challenge with that option is that it’s unclear how steady the flow of hydrogen might be from such a source over the long term.
Startup Vema Hydrogen thinks it has a better, cheaper approach. Rather than simply relying on “what Mother Nature is willing to give,” it’s injecting a proprietary saltwater solution underground to generate carbon-free hydrogen from a reaction with particular types of iron-rich rock formations, said CEO Pierre Levin. “Vema’s solution in this regard is much more industrial and predictable.”
Levin previously ran a geologic hydrogen startup, but was swayed by Vema’s approach. “It’s maybe the only way to produce economic and clean hydrogen at scale. All the other solutions have very serious shortcomings,” he told Forbes. “This business is so big that we could become the Shell of hydrogen in 15 years.”
That remains to be seen. However, Vema has drilled its first two pilot wells in Quebec to validate its claims about “engineered mineral hydrogen.” The pilot is the first field deployment of the technology, following many years of laboratory work, he said. If all goes to plan, Vema will supply hydrogen created at its Quebec pilot wells to be used for so-called e-fuels, including sustainable aviation fuel, among other things.
The types of geological formations it’s targeting........