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Can anyone tell me where to find natually occurring H2 gas on earth?

or at least in quantities and purities such that it costs less than $1/MMBTU to extract

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  • John W
    Lv 7
    1 decade ago
    Favorite Answer

    Commercial supplies of hydrogen are from steam reformation of natural gas. As the energy for the disassociation comes from the natural gas itself, it doesn't suffer from the high energy cost of electrolysis. In general, the procedure can be extended to anything that burns in a process called gasification, producing syngas which is a combination of hydrogen and carbon monoxide. Of course, once you have syngas, you can synthesize gasoline or diesel fuel which have much higher energy densities by volume than hydrogen. Biomass to syngas to gasoline/diesel is expected to be competitive if oil remains above $86 per barrel (other estimates range from $50 to $75 per barrel).

    Natural gas will be the closest that you will find to a hydrogen reserve. You'll have to go to Jupiter for the nearest natural H2 reserves and that will definitely cost more than $1/MMBTU.

    Even natural gas is too expensive to bring to market as separate pipelines, pumps, compressors and liquefaction plants must be built to bring it to market, the same would be true for hydrogen were it possible to find any.

    The reason why you won't find free standing H2 on Earth is because Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars are rocky planets, the hydrogen is all with the gaseous planets which is why they're gaseous. Sorry, it's just impossible for there to be any free standing hydrogen to be found on Earth.

  • 1 decade ago

    There ain't no such place. The best way to "make" H2 gas is to run a voltage across salt water and electrolyze the H2 and O2 from H2O.

    That's the problem with Hydrogen / Fuel cell cars. The "fuel" is best considered to be a type of battery, storing (presumably renewable) electricity at one location, transporting it and using it at another.

    Of course, you could look at oil in the same way, except that sunlight (solar energy) was stored millions of years ago in plant, which rotten, got liquefied, and is used where we need it.

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