The Midcontinent Rift in North America has the potential to become a huge source of natural hydrogen production, meeting the world’s clean energy needs.
Hidden deep beneath Lake Superior is a rift zone containing huge amounts of hydrogen. Image: iStock
About 1.1 billion years ago, the North American continent almost split in two, leaving behind a 1,900 km long strip of volcanic rock called the Midcontinent rift zone. A team of scientists from the University of Nebraska – Lincoln is studying this fissure – which runs from under Lake Superior through parts of Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas – to determine the best way to reach huge amounts of hydrogen underneath, SciTechDaily reported on November 15.
Hydrogen could be a key element in efforts to reduce dependence on fossil fuels. Hydrogen does not emit carbon and is also different from oil and gas, which can take millions of years to form from organic sediments. Instead, hydrogen continuously regenerates underground as water interacts with volcanic rocks.
To test the ability to produce hydrogen in the fissure, scientists drilled a test well in Nebraska five years ago. To date, the data obtained is very promising. They believe it’s possible that geological and biogeochemical conditions within the rift limit hydrogen loss, allowing hydrogen to be retained at an economical scale.
“This place may be deep enough for storage but still shallow enough for us to reach. Geology is on our side,” said Karrie Weber, professor of atmospheric, biological and Earth sciences.
The US Geological Survey (USGS) estimates that there are tens of millions to tens of billions of megatons (1 megaton equals 1 million tons) of hydrogen in the Earth’s crust. But humans will not be able to access most of it because it is too deep or too far from shore, or concentrated in too small quantities to exploit. Therefore, places like the Midcontinent Rift Zone are very important. Some other underground fissures around the world, for example in France, Germany, Russia, and Africa, can also be sources of hydrogen production.
The Nebraska team will explore a number of questions surrounding the flow and seepage of hydrogen from underground to the surface, the ability to store hydrogen naturally or in engineered storage systems, and how hydrogen reacts with underground fluids and rock minerals, and how quickly and how much hydrogen is consumed by microorganisms, according to civil engineering professor Seunghee Kim. They have now been awarded a five-year $1 million grant through the National Science Foundation’s Advanced Research in Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering (RAISE) initiative.
Thu Thao (Theo SciTechDaily)