An extraordinary recent discovery is that there are extensive underground reservoirs of hydrogen. That can be called a natural gas too. We used to say, hydrogen, you can't just dig it out of the ground. But apparently it's looking like you can.Martin_B wrote: ↑Wed Jan 03, 2024 10:32 pmNatural gas is gas which comes from gas reservoirs, and is a mix of various different components, not just methane. Methane is usually the most common component, but ethane, propane, butane (both isomers), even pentane can be present. Components with greater molecular masses generally get liquified and turned into other products.
But as these other components are also present, some natural gas mixtures are denser than air. So the venting arrangements for a propane-based heat exchange fluid need not be so very different to a standard venting arrangement (the point I was trying to make, obviously unsuccessfully!)![]()
Since it occurs in quite different geologies from coal, oil and methane gas, it has only rarely been accidentally drilled into. Well, it is common to find small quantities of hydrogen in certain common locations. There have been a scant number of cases over the years of people finding hydrogen issuing in quantity from a hole in the ground. So hydrogen in useful quantity was thought likely a rare curiosity. But now geologists have been thinking about how it might form and collect, and have gone out looking for it in the places that suggests, they have all of a sudden been finding quite a lot of it. A single strike in France appears to contain several years worth of present global production of hydrogen. Though of course we need several orders of magnitude more than that for it to be material in decarbonisation. Though this is but one of a hundred or so of sources recently identified. It remains unclear quite how much there is in global terms, a lot more exploration is needed.
It might yet prove the serendipitous discovery that makes decarbonisation a lot easier, though of course from zero to a global scale hydrogen extraction program in completely different places from present gas reservoirs is a huge investment and conversion. And whilst some are suggesting that there is several centuries of global energy needs there, we don't know that is true yet.
An article on this in science.org