Scientists are using computer simulations and laboratory experiments to see if depleted oil and natural gas reservoirs can be used for storing carbon-free hydrogen fuel.
Hydrogen is an important clean fuel: It can be made by splitting water using solar or wind power, it can be used to generate electricity and power heavy industry, and it could be used to power fuel-cell-based vehicles. Additionally, hydrogen could be stored for months and used when energy needs outpace the supply delivered by renewable energy sources.
"Hydrogen would be good for seasonal and long-term storage," said Sandia chemical engineer Tuan Ho, who is leading the research."If you think of solar energy, in the summer you can produce a lot of electricity, but you don't need a lot for heating. The excess can be turned into hydrogen and stored until winter."
"You want the hydrogen to stay where you inject it," Ho said."You don't want it to migrate away from the storage zone and get lost. That's just a waste of money, which is a big concern for any storage facility." This means that the loss of hydrogen in clay due to getting stuck or moving through it would be tiny, Ho said. This is quite positive for underground storage of hydrogen. These findings on clay were published last year in the journal Sustainable Energy and Fuels.
Ho's team, principally Sandia postdoctoral researcher Aditya Choudhary, is currently studying the effects of hydrogen on a depleted oil reservoir and how leftover oil might contaminate or interact with hydrogen gas using both molecular simulations and experiments. "If we want to create a hydrogen economy, we really need widely distributed means of storing large quantities of hydrogen," Conley said."Storage in salt is excellent where it exists, but it can't be the sole option. So, we're turning to depleted oil and gas reservoirs and aquifers as more geologically distributed means of storing large quantities of hydrogen. It's all in the name of decarbonizing the energy sector.
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