Dynamic Earth, Surface Processes & Natural Hazards

As the world shifts towards clean and renewable energy sources, hydrogen is emerging as a promising alternative energy carrier to fossil fuels, with the potential to power vehicles, heat homes, and generate electricity. It may also serve as a critical energy source for several industrial sectors, including heavy goods transport, steel, cement and ammonia production. Current hydrogen generation methods however require it be manufactured from water or petroleum, processes that are costly relative to fossil fuels and lack the efficiency required to make an impact in the real world.
Natural hydrogen, also known as gold or white hydrogen, refers to molecular H2 produced by Earth's natural processes and accumulated within the crust. Since it is naturally occurring, it offers an exciting solution to current energy intensive hydrogen production. Although natural hydrogen is an emerging research theme, it remains a poorly understood form of chemical energy; from sourcing, to migration, the probability of accumulation or destruction, every stage of the system remains unresolved. Currently, serpentinization and radiolysis are considered the two main mechanisms of geologic hydrogen generation. The decay of uranium, thorium and potassium within the Earth's crust results in the ionisation of water contained within pores and fractures to 'split' water and produce species such as molecular hydrogen. Importantly, radiolysis links hydrogen and helium produced in the crust, since He4 (representing 99.9% of all helium) is only produced by the alpha decay of Uranium and Thorium. Helium is also a highly strategic resource with applications in cryogenics, electronics, welding and more and could be viewed as a significant value addition to white hydrogen exploration.

The research proposed here aims to improve exploration for helium and hydrogen resources in two key areas:

(1) predicting the production rates, and (2) discovering sites of high He/H2 concentration gas. Present methods for calculating He and H2 production in crystalline basement do not take into account fracture geometry nor the propagation of ionizing particles and rays through rock matrix and assume that all ionizing energy is successfully deposited in water surrounding the radioelement 5-7 . To correct this, an interdisciplinary approach combining particle physics simulations with 3D discrete fracture networks will model the production of H2 and He in different crystalline rock geometries and concentrations to isolate the key parameters and better constrain production rate estimates in source rocks.