Native hydrogen – gas surface seepage

Project lead

Dr Laurent Langhi, laurent.langhi@csiro.au

Challenge

Hydrogen can be used in many different ways to decarbonise industries, but the two main production methods have challenges. Hydrogen produced using steam reforming of natural gas involves carbon emissions, while electrolysis is energy intensive and expensive.

Extracting hydrogen from the ground could potentially cheaper than electrolysis and have lower emissions that steam reforming. Researchers around the world are now working on the problem of how to find native hydrogen, also known as natural hydrogen.

What we are doing

This project tested the presence of natural hydrogen seeps in Australia with the development and application of a soil-gas sampling technic.

Outcomes to date

We have successfully applied soil-gas monitoring techniques to test for the presence of natural hydrogen seeps in Australia.

The team is now working to further develop our invention, the 3H Seep Tracker. It consists of a rugged device with several sensors inside, to measure the presence of hydrogen, helium and methane in the soil. The team have trained a machine learning model to calibrate the measurements and provide real-time data visualisation from multiple devices.

Project finish date

January 2023

Relevant project publications

Frery, E., Langhi, L., Maison, M., & Moretti, I. (2021). Natural hydrogen seeps identified in the North Perth Basin, Western Australia. International Journal of Hydrogen Energy, 46(61), 31158-31173.

Frery, E., Langhi, L., Markov, J., (submitted to the APPEA Journal). Natural hydrogen exploration in Australia – state of knowledge and presentation of a case study. To be published after the APPEA conference in June 2022.

HyResearch record

Native hydrogen – gas surface seepage – HyResearch (csiro.au)