Albanian mines reveal large reserves of natural hydrogen gas underground

The largest flow of natural hydrogen gas ever recorded has been measured deep in an Albanian mine. The discovery could help locate underground reserves of this clean fuel.

“The lather is really intense,” he says. Laurent Truche Researchers at France’s Grenoble-Alpes University measured gas in a pool of water about a kilometer underground. “It’s like a jacuzzi.”

Companies are currently searching for natural hydrogen deposits around the world as a source of clean fuel, but there is scant evidence that this “golden hydrogen” has accumulated in large quantities. Most claims about vast subsurface hydrogen deposits rely on extrapolation rather than direct measurements.

In search of more substantive evidence, Truche and his colleagues descended on Albania’s Balkizekromite mine. There, hydrogen gas escaping from the rocks has caused several explosions. The mine is also located in an outcrop of iron-rich rocks known as ophiolites. In other places, such as Oman, water is known to react with such rocks to produce hydrogen.

The researchers found that more than 80% of the gas bubbling out of the pool was hydrogen, mixed with methane and small amounts of nitrogen. That gas was flowing at a rate of 11 tons per year, almost an order of magnitude more than any other gas. Flow of hydrogen gas measured from a single point source elsewhere on the Earth’s surface.

To determine the source of the gas, the researchers also modeled various geological scenarios that could produce such flows. They found that the most likely scenario is that the gas is coming from a deeper reservoir of hydrogen accumulated in faults beneath the mine. Based on the geometry of the fault, they estimate that the reservoir contains at least 5,000 to 50,000 tons of hydrogen.

“This is one of the largest amounts of natural hydrogen ever measured,” he says. Eric Gaucher an independent geochemist focused on natural hydrogen.

But he says it’s still not a huge amount. Jeffrey Ellis At the U.S. Geological Survey. But evidence of stable hydrogen accumulation supports the idea that there is more hydrogen stored underground, he says. “We need to look deeper.”