This is a Preprint and has not been peer reviewed. The published version of this Preprint is available: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhydene.2025.05.357. This is version 3 of this Preprint.

Natural Hydrogen Development-Potential and Challenges
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Abstract
Natural hydrogen has recently been identified as a potential source for future energy systems. This paper investigates the technical development potential of natural hydrogen by estimating, for some recent finds and identified prospects, in-place and recoverable hydrogen, well productivity, water production and other byproducts that a future development would have to cater for.
Finds are in three broad play types:
1) focused-seepage plays where predominantly aqueous hydrogen migrates with minimal trapping;
2) coalbed plays where hydrogen is adsorbed molecularly in coals;
3) reservoir-trap-seal plays with gaseous hydrogen trapped underneath an impermeable seal.
Focused-seepage plays have a low to modest hydrogen resource-density, low well-productivity and developments may co-produce large volumes of water. Coalbed hydrogen plays may have higher resource density but again, low well-productivity. Only developments of reservoir-trap-seal plays could potentially achieve industrial offtake but to date no accumulations of this type have unambiguously been discovered.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.31223/X5VH9R
Subjects
Earth Sciences
Keywords
Natural HydrogenWhite Hydrogen, Play Classification, resource assessment, Field Development, decarbonization, natural hydrogen, white hydrogen
Dates
Published: 2025-01-31 07:44
Last Updated: 2025-06-01 06:39
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License
CC-BY Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International
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Conflict of interest statement:
None
Data Availability (Reason not available):
Data will be made available (in the form of sample spreadsheets illustrating the formulas used) as part of Journal peer-review and publication (ongoing)
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