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Natural hydrogen has the potential to become a significant contributor to the low carbon energy economy, with interest and exploration increasing globally.

Of the potential pathways that can generate hydrogen in the subsurface, the reduction of water by iron-containing minerals, such as during serpentinization, has been identified as the most prospective. However, there are still many fundamental factors to consider when determining the resource potential of different systems, including the underlying mechanisms that can lead to hydrogen generation from iron rich minerals.

A team based in the Water Research Centre at UNSW Sydney are working with colleagues from Geoscience Australia and geoscience agencies within the New South Wales, South Australian, Tasmanian and Western Australian state governments to assess iron-mediated pathways of natural hydrogen generation in Australian subsurface environments. Our primary goal is to develop open-access predictive tools to help assess the exploitability of natural hydrogen generating environments in Australia. Furthermore, we hope to apply this knowledge to investigate the potential for engineered retrieval of hydrogen from iron-rich subsurface environments.

In this project, the key mineral transformations associated with hydrogen production are being investigated with the goal of providing mechanistic insight into the geochemical processes underpinning both the changes in mineralogy and the hydrogen production of this resource. These mechanistic insights are likely to be critical to answering the question “can we viably recover this resource and, if so, at what rate and for how long”.