Natural Hydrogen, "Liquid Gold"
By Eric Aaserud
Originally published at Westlaw Today
Eric Aaserud discusses the prospects for naturally occurring hydrogen becoming a primary source of renewable energy.
Synopsis
A growing number of scientists believe that natural — or "gold" — hydrogen could constitute a primary resource for renewable energy. There are concrete examples of this potential now, from a constant source of hydrogen that electrifies a village in Mali to high concentrations gushing up from the seafloor.
While the U.S. government is not yet awarding contracts and grants in this area, companies that possess innovative solutions ought to consider submitting unsolicited proposals. In addition, they should pay attention to federal statements, such as requests for information and broad agency announcements, that can provide insight into what the future holds.
The term "hydrogen time" in the title of this piece is not intended to suggest exclusivity. The words do not portray, we hope, a provincial fixation on the present. Indeed, hydrogen has existed in unfathomable quantities since the beginning of the universe. In human terms, the element has had innumerable touchstone moments down through the centuries. A few examples:
In 1766, Henry Cavendish identified hydrogen as a unique element (after reacting zinc with hydrochloric acid) and then later, standing before an audience at the Royal Society of London, set hydrogen gas aflame, producing water.
In 1783, Jacques-Alexandre-César Charles launched an unmanned hydrogen balloon from Paris. (Local villagers attacked and destroyed it when it landed near Gonesse, nine miles to the northeast.) That same year, Jean-Fran?ois Pilatre de Rozier and Fran?ois Laurent soared above Paris in the first manned hydrogen balloon flight.
In 1839, Christian Friedrich Sch?nbein published his fuel cell discoveries, a process of combining oxygen and hydrogen gases to produce an electric current and water.
Jules Verne wrote in his 1874 novel The Mysterious Island (in a rather lengthy passage of dialog) that "water will one day be employed as fuel, that hydrogen and oxygen which constitute it, used singly or together, will furnish an inexhaustible source of heat and light, of an intensity of which coal is not capable."
In 1903, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, in his Treatise on Space Travel, envisioned a rocket engine powered by liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen.1
In the 1930s, Rudolf Erren converted trucks and buses to hydrogen fuel in England and Germany.
These were all weighty findings and achievements, representing only a fraction of the whole. In short, people have been focused on the possibilities of hydrogen, taking incremental steps of advancement, for a long time.
Today, however, we are witnessing an upwelling of discoveries and crises that make the present feel like big-time hydrogen time. There is a kind of convergence afoot. One of the key discoveries is the potentiality of natural hydrogen. (Here, we refer generally to "natural hydrogen." The term "geologic hydrogen" commonly refers to a subset of natural hydrogen that exists in the Earth's subsurface.)
Naturally Produced Hydrogen
It is often said that hydrogen is rarely found in a natural state, but such statements tend to be in reference to the surface of the Earth. (Even on the surface of the Earth, natural hydrogen is not uncommon.)
More and more, researchers are discovering that hydrogen exists naturally deep underground where iron-rich minerals such as olivine, a substantial element in the Earth's mantle, react with water. There, a coupled redox reaction occurs in which the iron becomes oxidized and the water is reduced, releasing hydrogen.
A recent article in Science notes that this phenomenon can be seen at the volcanic Mid-Atlantic Ridge, where tectonic plates splay and mantle rocks ascend forming fresh slabs of ocean bottom crust.2 In these turbulent locales, scientists have measured high concentrations of hydrogen gushing up from the sea floor.
In the early 20th century, Ernst Erdman observed that substantial amounts of hydrogen (128 cubic feet per day) poured out of the Leopoldshall Salt Mine in Strassfurt, Germany. In 1987, in Mali, deep-water drillers discovered flammable gas flowing from a reservoir near the village of Bourakébougo.
Later, in 2012, while developing the resource, a Canadian company found that the gas was 98% hydrogen. During the company's ten-day testing period, reservoir pressure remained constant, suggesting the source is renewable. The hydrogen has been a source of electricity for the village for more than a decade.
Scientists also have discovered significant concentrations of hydrogen around the "Carolina bays" along the U.S. Atlantic Coastal Plain from New York to north Florida. (In Maryland they are called "Maryland basins.") It appears that the bays are the result of fluid flow pathways for hydrogen moving from deep within the Earth to the surface.
A growing number of scientists believe the aggregate volume of natural hydrogen in the subsurface is massive and could constitute a primary resource. According to the general theory, deep Earth iron and water reactions are constantly producing hydrogen. While most of it gets consumed through a variety of biologic and abiotic processes, a significant amount gets trapped under the surface.3
According to a U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) model,4 there could be enough natural hydrogen in the Earth to meet "at least 50% of the forecast green H2 production by the year 2100 and beyond."
A key question that needs to be addressed, says Geoffrey Ellis, PhD, USGS organic geochemist and lead author of the USGS model, is this: How much of this massive volume of hydrogen exists in accumulations that are economically accessible? A corollary question: How do we develop exploration strategies to effectively find these accumulations?
Benefits of Natural Hydrogen
Commercial hydrogen tends to be manufactured today in ways that are either polluting or expensive. Production of the most common type, referred to as "gray" hydrogen, relies on fossil fuels that discharge carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. "Green" hydrogen, generated from solar or wind power, costs about $5 per kilogram, more than twice the cost of gray hydrogen.
Natural hydrogen — or "gold" hydrogen — is different. It is clean, renewable, and relatively cheap. The Science article sums this up neatly: "It takes millions of years for buried and compressed organic deposits to turn into oil and gas. By contrast, natural hydrogen is always being made afresh, when underground water reacts with iron minerals at elevated temperatures and pressures."
Large, Replenishing Resource
The best estimate for the annual flux of hydrogen from the subsurface to the atmosphere is 23 metric tons per year.5
Dr. Ellis believes this amount probably approximates the renewable production because it reflects "the amount that is generated in the crust and upper mantle plus any primordial hydrogen seeping out of the Earth's mantle/core annually."
Although a portion of the generated hydrogen likely flows into subsurface traps, these traps are probably full because this process has been occurring for tens of millions of years.
In this regard, Dr. Ellis provides the following analogy: Imagine that "you are pouring water into a cup with a leak in the bottom. Assuming the rate of water going into the cup is greater than that leaking out, eventually the cup will overflow and the rate of overflow plus the leak will equal the rate going into the cup. Producing geologic hydrogen would be like putting a straw into the cup and drinking from it. As you drink, it is constantly being refilled (and also slowly leaking out). If you produce (i.e., drink) at a rate greater than 23 [metric tons per year], you will start to empty the cup. How long you can produce depends on the magnitude of the production rate, but a rate of [23 metric tons per year] can be maintained indefinitely."
The 23 metric tons per year figure is probably a minimum estimate. In his 2020 paper, Viacheslav Zgonnik, PhD, opines that the actual number might be 2 to 3 orders of magnitude larger.6 He notes that each time the estimate of the hydrogen flux from subsurface to atmosphere has been updated (going back more than 30 years) the number has gone up as more data have become available.
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In addition, the amount of so-called "renewable" hydrogen — that is, hydrogen generated annually by natural processes (i.e., 23 metric tons per year) — is significantly less than the potential resource at the Earth's subsurface.
Growing Interest in Natural Hydrogen
The epicenters of natural hydrogen research and exploration appear to be in Australia and Europe. The U.S. federal government has yet to embrace natural hydrogen as an important investment. At the USGS, for example, only a small staff is dedicated to the subject.
At Department of Energy's Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), it is harder to quantify staff size because the personnel there do not get assigned to specific topics. Instead, they adapt to the work flow of program development and execution. ARPA-E's Program Director, Douglas Wick, PhD, said that the agency is in the process of developing a potential program around natural hydrogen.
Interest in the U.S. is on the rise. Last year, USGS's Dr. Ellis organized a committee on Geologic Hydrogen Resources and Storage in the Energy Minerals Division of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists. The response was robust. Everyone invited to join enthusiastically accepted.
In addition, the Canadian Geological Survey recently expressed interest in collaborating with the USGS on natural hydrogen studies.
Proposing Outside the Box: Unsolicited Proposals
If you want to pursue federal funding and have an innovative solution involving natural hydrogen — or hydrogen in general — that does not fit within current funding opportunities, what are your options? One possibility is to draft and submit an unsolicited proposal.
Unsolicited proposals are those submitted on the initiative of the offeror, rather than in response to a request (other than a general statement of needs) publicized by the agency.
To be considered, an unsolicited proposal must:
Beyond these core requirements, an unsolicited proposal should follow the specific guidance (if any) published by the agency.8 Among the instructive elements to follow closely are the marking requirements at FAR 15.609. Failure to do so can result in the government obtaining unlimited rights in your proprietary information.9
The government is obligated to fairly evaluate unsolicited proposals. Scott v. United States, 134 Fed. Cl. 755 (2017). Federal agencies can issue several types of awards in response to them, including contracts, grants, and cooperative agreements.
Closing Thoughts
Hydrogen has some distance to go to become a widely adopted energy source. In glaring contrast, lithium batteries are everywhere, a substantial part of our daily lives. Some commentators are now calling these ubiquitous energy tools the "new oil," a label that has a certain ring of truth. Like all trends, though, there is much in it that is transitory as well.
The new never stays that way — it is always a question of time — and the period of relevancy for lithium batteries could be shorter than we imagine. There are a number of problems associated with these products, after all, most notably environmental harm and dependence on nonrenewable minerals largely sourced overseas.10
Perhaps someday the truer "new oil" — the more sustainable, longer lasting solution — will be hydrogen.
Government funding should help us get there. If your company possesses innovative solutions in the hydrogen space, consider monitoring federal funding sites, such as Grants.gov and Sam.gov, for opportunities.
In addition to solicitations and funding opportunity announcements, pay attention as well to more general statements, such as requests for information and broad agency announcements.11 These can give you insights into what might be coming in the future. If you fail to find a specific opportunity that matches your solution, think about developing and submitting an unsolicited proposal.
Notes
1. NASA would adopt this approach more than half a century later. The space agency "uses liquid hydrogen, combined with liquid oxygen, as fuel in cryogenic rocket engines, and the commodity's unique properties support the development of aeronautics." https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-awards-contract-for-liquid-hydrogen.
2. https://www.science.org/content/article/hidden-hydrogen-earth-may-hold-vast-stores-renewable-carbon-free-fuel
3. See Larin, Zgonnik, Rodina, Deville, Prinzhofer "Evidence for natural molecular hydrogen seepage associated with Carolina bays," SpringerOpen (2015), https://progearthplanetsci.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40645-015-0062-5. A large deposit of natural hydrogen was recently discovered in France, https://www.energynomics.ro/en/france-fde-discovered-a-large-deposit-of-natural-hydrogen/.
4. https://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2022AM/meetingapp.cgi/Paper/380270
5. As a point of reference, the International Renewable Energy Agency projects total global hydrogen demand to reach 614 metric tons per year by 2050, which would meet 12% of the total energy use. https://www.spglobal.com/commodityinsights/en/market-insights/latest-news/energy-transition/070822-global-hydrogen-demand-seen-at-614-million-mtyear-by-2050-irena.
6. See Zgonnick, "The occurrence and geoscience of natural hydrogen," Earth-Science Reviews, vol. 203 (April 2020).
7. Federal Acquisition Regulation 15.603(c).
8. See, for example, the USGS's "Guide For Submitting Unsolicited Proposals." https://www.usgs.gov/office-of-acquisition-and-grants/guide-submitting-unsolicited-proposals.
9. Xerxe Group, Inc. v. United States, 278 F.3d 1357 (Fed. Cir. 2002).
10. https://www.euronews.com/green/2022/02/01/south-america-s-lithium-fields-reveal-the-dark-side-of-our-electric-future
11. For example, in a now closed (July 11, 2022) request for information, ARPA-E sought "information regarding the technical potential to stimulate hydrogen-forming reactions in old Precambrian rock as a way to produce clean hydrogen, using the subsurface as a georeactor." https://arpa-e-foa.energy.gov/Default.aspx?foaId=d4b7835f-0eda-49b7-9e28-5b15d55488c2.
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Eric Aaserud helps companies conduct business with the public sector. He focuses especially on commercial item contracting, small-business contracting, and software and technical data rights counseling. Eric has presented on a variety of legal topics through such organizations as the Practising Law Institute, the National Contract Management Association and the ABA Section of International Law. In addition, he has published articles in such publications as the Procurement Lawyer and Law360.
If you need assistance in government contracting, feel free to reach out. Email us at [email protected] or message us here on LinkedIn. Read more about our work at https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/eric-aaserud-40220618/.