Prospectors who hunt hydrogen along the American continental rask

The drilling drive rises several stories above the field usually full of grazing livestock. Although we are in Kansas, the equipment of both the American and Australian flags reflecting the origin of its owner below: Hyterra arrived everything from Australia in search of natural hydrogen fuel produced deep in ancient fracture in North America.

“Behind us is the middle continental rift, which we think is the kitchen in which he runs hydrogen,” he says Avon McintyreCompany CEO. Rift has attracted many companies to the American Middle West, making the East Kansas one of the most prominent borders in the world’s pursuit of “geological hydrogen”, for which many hopes could be used as an alternative to zero-glowing fossil fuels.

The story begins about 1.3 billion years ago, when the continental plate that North America has now begun to be separated into two. Although the continent eventually stopped expanding, the fracture left behind the scars of the rock of a 2000 kilometers of iron. Today, this dismissed is buried deep under the farm and ranch of the American Middle West.

In the eastern Kansas, where the rigid rock around the breakup rises relatively close to the surface, the high concentration of hydrogen are measured in old oil and gas wells. In order to see if this can be collected, a few companies have leased the rights to drill hydrogen to more than 100,000 hectares of land in the area. This is according to the estimates of McIntyre, which is based on the public reports of the court. Hyterra and her competitor of the wheel went on, starting to drill a deep underground.

“It’s kind of like a gold rush, where everyone is trying to find him,” he says Christian Delano in Kolom based in Colorado. Would not say where the company drills in Kansas, but says it is public knowledge They drilled there. Other companies, such as another Australian company called Top End Energy, buy mineral rights based solely at the place where Koloma is considered to buy.

“There were a lot of buzzing around the community,” says Shawn Mcintyre, who has nothing to do with Hyterra’s executive director. Shawn is a ranch in Waterville, Kansas who leased several thousand hectares of his country to drill hydrogen. “This could be a very good opportunity for the industry to return to some of the smaller cities that dry in this part of the world.”

Global underground hydrogen hunt was encouraged only a few years ago Revised estimates of how much the planet may contain. Companies seeking gas accumulation are hoping that could serve as low emissions alternative to fossil fuels It is now used to make fertilizers and energy of heavy industry and transportation. “Natural hydrogen fits perfectly into that picture,” he says Jay Kalbas in Kansas geological research. “If … we sit on huge amounts of productive hydrogen, that could change not only the state and the region, but also the country.”

At the drilling site southwest of Manhattan, Kansas, Avon Mcintyre and I break through the mud and climb the drilling platform. “It’s all to find out what’s the hell happens down there,” yells Mcintyre over the roar of the plant.

The theory of the company of the company is that hydrogen is created when the water from the underground aquifers penetrates into the rock rich in the wall -rich mantle and reacts with a metal in the process called serpentinization. This reaction releases hydrogen water molecules, which migrate into the surrounding rock.

This is the second of five research Wells Hyterra for drilling plans in Kansas this year, intended to detect hydrogen along the line that extended to the east from the split to an underground rise in an underground underground be called Memorial Greben. Earlier this year, the company reported that its first well, drilled at the superb point of the ridge, discovered the concentration of hydrogen 96 percent.

Now, after a few weeks of drilling 24 hours a day, the second well approached its maximum depth, just over 1600 meters. At the top of the device, mud filled with granite cuttings away from the hole thrown into the trough, where the pipes suck in gas from the liquid to measure.

In “Mud Shack”, a small mobile office on the edge of the site, a group of performers watched at the screen of the screen because the instruments reported the composition of gas from different depths in real time. After staying at a low level through most of the solid rock, the hydrogen concentration has just begun to mark up to more than 800 parts per million.

“[The first well] He had really nice tops, but this one is just bleeding hydrogen, “says Hyterra’s Josh Whitcombe.

These measurements mean a little to themselves. Gas samples must be sent from a place for more controlled test. Furthermore, high hydrogen concentrations do not indicate anything about how much gas can actually flow from wells and how long.

Even if hydrogen eventually flows from any of these wells, there are numerous other questions, including to separate from other gases, how they will be stored and transported and who would buy it.

But Mcintyre was excited to have discovered hydrogen at all, and he pushed the crew to continue drilling through the night. “We drill the information,” he says. “And now we have some.”

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