Extract from ABC News
Gold Hydrogen's been exploring for natural hydrogen in South Australia. (Supplied: Gold Hydrogen)
In short:
Exploration for natural hydrogen is expanding across Australia, with South Australia seen as a potential world leader.
The gas could be used as a zero emissions alternative to natural gas, or mixed with gas to reduce emissions.
What's next?
Companies undertaking exploration say it could be a few years before natural hydrogen can be extracted, if found in viable quantities.
The hunt is on for underground stores of the universe's most abundant element, with Australia, and SA in particular, at the forefront of the emerging industry.
Natural hydrogen is being viewed as a potentially more economic way to accumulate hydrogen for use as a zero emissions energy source, and to replace "grey hydrogen" produced using fossil fuels.
In South Australia, a number of companies have obtained licences to explore for the so-called "gold hydrogen" in source rocks deep underground.
Adelaide University researcher Rachelle Kernen said this hydrogen could help cut greenhouse gas emissions.
"It's considered to be like the clean version of a fuel, compared to oil or natural gas," she said.
SA Energy and Mining Minister Tom Koutsantonis said he viewed the resource as a potential "global game changer".
Tom Koutsantonis says hydrogen could be a game changer for industry. (ABC News: Lincoln Rothall)
"Hydrogen is one of those commodities whose time will come, and when it does come it will revolutionise Australian industry, and in fact global industry," he said.
"This is the equivalent of tripping over gold.
"If we can harvest this naturally, it would really be a game changer."
Going from grey to gold
This year, the South Australian government awarded exploration licence applications to ventures looking for natural hydrogen in the Otway Basin.
One of those projects is a joint venture between Thor Energy and H2EX, covering more than 4,000 square kilometres in SA's south-east.
Thor Energy CEO and managing director Andrew Hume said about 99 per cent of the world's hydrogen, used in a variety of industrial processes, was grey hydrogen.
But he said some industries were looking for more environmentally friendly sources.
"There's been a lot of hype around the manufactured 'green hydrogen' … but the Earth naturally produces hydrogen from the ground from a few different processes," he said.
"We've known this for more than 100 years, but it's never really been found in quantities or locations that can be extracted in the way natural gas can."
Andrew Hume is bullish on hydrogen's future. (Supplied: Thor Energy)
One such location is an oil well east of the town of Robe, drilled in 1915, where samples taken contained about a 25 per cent hydrogen concentration.
"We'll start to explore and mature that area, and make sure that the results we found in that well were actual, real results and not some sort of error," Mr Hume said.
"From that, we'll obviously have quite high confidence we're looking in the right place."
Over on the Yorke Peninsula, exploration wells drilled by Gold Hydrogen have found hydrogen with a 97 per cent purity.
Managing director Neil McDonald said the company would undertake flow testing in the coming weeks to help determine if the project was viable.
All going well, he hopes for early proof-of-concept production of hydrogen in the next 18 to 24 months.
Gold Hydrogen's drilling has found hydrogen with a purity of about 97 per cent. (Supplied: Gold Hydrogen)
"Using it for energy, transport and trucking, using it to make fertiliser and the like are some of the easy uses," Mr McDonald said.
"But to have it on big scale will take some time.
"We believe that we will have enough natural hydrogen to not only supply Australia's demands but also an export market for us too."
Plenty of potential, but work to do
Mr Koutsantonis said he saw natural hydrogen as a way to cut emissions from natural gas use.
"If there is an ability to harvest natural hydrogen you can blend that in natural gas lines to 20 to 30 per cent without any corrosive effects," he said.
"That means that we can offset gas use by having this naturally occurring product being harvested that has the same properties as gas.
"It's not as dense, but it is readily available and produced naturally so if it's able to be captured and then actually used it would have tremendous benefits because the mining costs would be so much cheaper than natural gas."
He said hydrogen could help reduce emissions from industrial processes such as smelting, glass manufacturing and the Kimberly-Clark tissue mill in the state's south-east.
The state government planned to construct a green hydrogen plant, to provide hydrogen for steel production in Whyalla, but that project has since been shelved.
"If it's actually coming up to ground naturally, and being able to harvest those veins and store that hydrogen without having to use electricity to split water, the cost implications will be dramatic," Mr Koutsantonis said.
Rachelle Kernen says hydrogen interest will move in cycles. (Supplied: Rachelle Kernen)
Despite the positivity for the future, the viability of the industry still has a way to go.
"You'll have periods like right now and coming up where it's going to be good," Dr Kernen said.
"It's a great time to raise money and to start testing ideas, funding projects and scientific research.
"Then it'll peter out and you'll go into the next cycle.
"These things trickle … and then, all of a sudden, it just becomes the norm and the status quo."
Australia is emerging as an early leader in natural hydrogen exploration. (Supplied: Gold Hydrogen)
Exploration is spreading across the globe, including in the US, Canada, France, and 10 to 15 other countries.
"It is a bit of a gold rush,"Mr Hume said.
However there is only one example of production, used to provide hydrogen for a small community in the west African country of Mali.
"This is a very new industry," Mr Hume said.
"We have to find industrial and economically viable ways of doing this."
While excited by the prospect, Mr Koutsantonis said there were still questions to be answered.
"How do you get it out of the ground? How do you get it stored? How do you get it to market?" he said.
"These are all questions that the private sector will have to answer."
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