Large Source Of Hydrogen Gas May Lie Near Slow-Spreading Tectonic Plates Under The Ocean (sciencedaily.com)

New submitter pyroclast writes: According to research from Duke University, rocks forming from fast-spreading tectonic plates create hydrogen gas in large quantities. The tectonic alternation of hydrolyzed ultramafic rock to serpentinized rock has the byproduct of hydrogen gas. Science Daily reports: "'A major benefit of this work is that it provides a testable, tectonic-based model for not only identifying where free hydrogen gas may be forming beneath the seafloor, but also at what rate, and what the total scale of this formation may be, which on a global basis is massive,' said [researcher] Lincoln F. Pratson[.] 'Most scientists previously thought all hydrogen production occurs only at slow-spreading lithosphere, because this is where most serpentinized rocks are found. Although faster-spreading lithosphere contains smaller quantities of this rock, our analysis suggests the amount of H2 produced there might still be large,' [researcher Stacy] Worman said. [S]cientists need to understand where the gas goes after it's produced. 'Maybe microbes are eating it, or maybe it's accumulating in reservoirs under the seafloor. We still don't know,' Worman said. 'Of course, such accumulations would have to be quite significant to make hydrogen gas produced by serpentinization a viable fuel source.'"

Comments

Re:How Much?

[Hylandr]

I can't even.

Another millennial that get's their 'science' from the entertainment industry. ( CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, Magazines, Radio, Movies, etc )

Plants convert CO2 to Oxygen that we turn back into CO2 by breathing in Oxygen. ( Photosynthesis )

Plants breathe in what we breathe out, and we breathe out what plants breathe in. ( This goes for any source of CO2 )

If you want to get more CO2 out of the air, replant the Amazon rain forest. Plant more tree's period. Tree's scrub the air for us and provide cooler temps wherever they are.

Now, go learn how to science and always check your sources!

Re:Much better source of Hydrogen

[Rei]

There's actually a plausible case for bringing hydrogen back from Venus (not Jupiter) - it's highly deuterium-enriched (~150-240x Earth) due to the great amount of hydrogen loss to space over the planet's history. If further enriched in-situ (using the local abundant energy resources), it could be exported back to Earth. And there's a pretty clever way to do in-situ enrichment as well: whatever facility you're operating is going to need nighttime energy storage. Electrolysis has a very strong enrichment factor. If you wire your fuel cell stack in a cascade, you're enriching the deuterium at the same time you're storing electricity, and hence getting it for "free" (only the cost of the cascaded plumbing versus a simpler linear approach). There's also potential for enrichment on the recombination side.

Exporting from Venus is (obviously) not economically viable at present, however; you need the total costs to get the return product** to be under $1k per kg. ~$2k/kg if you had to return some hydrogen-bearing material anyway (such as plastic containers) and returned deuterated versions instead. But there could well be a potential case in the distant future for importing hydrogen.

** Costs include in-situ propellant (and potentially drop tank) production for launch, fueling the cycler, deorbit costs at Earth, and of course maintenance of everything involved, not least capital cost amortization if you want to be fair.