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lath ,

This how you realize that there are people around that just want to blow shit up.

Crashumbc ,

Yes because igniting fires underground is a GREAT idea!

Centralia,PA would like a word…

CrimeDad OP ,

lemmy.crimedad.work/comment/836445

bamfic ,

carbon monoxide? is that healthy for you?

CrimeDad OP ,

In some cases, yes.

Zrybew ,

We’re about to make Fracking look like a great idea 😂

fubarx ,

Wait. Am I getting this right? They want to inject high-pressure steam and chemicals into a massive underground natural gas reservoir. Then set off a big fire + explosion.

Surely, nothing can go wrong.

CrimeDad OP ,

It’s called in situ combustion and apparently it’s a well established practice in the petroleum industry: glossary.slb.com/en/terms/i/in-situ_combustion

corsicanguppy ,

So is coal extraction. How long has that coal fire burned under that town? 60 years?

CrimeDad OP ,

You can read all about the Centralia mine fire here. ISC for oil extraction, as referenced by the paper, is not applicable to coal mining.

optissima ,
@optissima@lemmy.world avatar

You miss their point

CrimeDad OP ,

I do. I hope they will explain.

optissima ,
@optissima@lemmy.world avatar

To spell it out for you, Just because something is well established in the industry does not make it good.

CrimeDad OP ,

I never said it was good. I said it was a well established practice in response to @fubarx who seemed surprised that anyone would even consider it. I was surprised to learn about it as well, but it makes sense to use the oil or gas in the deposit to directly help fuel the process.

Crashumbc ,

MANY WELL ESTABLISHED practices are horribly stupid…

See the many natural disasters caused by company standard practices.

  1. Dumped raw toxins directly into rivers
  2. Locking the doors on clothing factories
  3. Fracking
CrimeDad OP ,

None of those things are in situ combustion thermal recovery. It may well be that this method isn’t appropriate for the process described in the paper. The paper also suggests RF thermal recovery as an alternative. The process just requires additional heat besides the steam to affect the SMR reaction and get the hydrogen out.

Crashumbc ,

No but they all claim their business practices were safe…

The water dilutes and carries the toxins away. Until the river catches fire…

If there’s a mine fire just close up the entrance and it’ll go out. Except it hasn’t for 60+ years.

Fracking can’t cause earthquakes, except it does and there is evidence the chemicals could actually be getting in ground water… This one is particularly interesting. Considering they claim this process is safe.

But I doubt you care about facts.

CrimeDad OP ,

I do care about facts, but relevance and context matter.

Grimy ,

Fuck hydrogen. Its a fake green product so oil companies can transition as slow as they want while still keeping their strangle hold on our society.

CrimeDad OP ,

I disagree. We need hydrogen for GHG-free fertilizer and steel production and it’s the superior choice for powering vehicles. Regardless, this research is interesting because it could help solve the natural gas problem.

grue ,

Hydrogen from gas fields is anything but GHG-free!

CrimeDad OP ,

That’s why processes that capture or avoid the GHG component of hydrogen production are worth investigating.

anindefinitearticle ,

Ok, but what about the ecosystems dependent on that chemical energy staying underground?

CrimeDad OP ,

Are you implying that there are subterranean ecosystems somehow dependent on natural gas deposits that are harmed by the exploitation of these resources?

anindefinitearticle ,

Yes.

These ecosystems are well studied.

This paper from the oil industry opens with the sentence “Methane-oxidizing bacteria (MOB) have long been recognized as an important bioindicator for oil and gas exploration.” We literally look for these ecosystems to know where to extract their food.

This isn’t controversial in the slightest. We are destroying unique ecosystems with every barrel we extract.

CrimeDad OP ,

That’s fascinating. Thank you for sharing. I guess these specific bacterial ecosystems would suffer, so to speak. Perhaps there should be rules to prevent oil and gas deposits from being completely depleted, or some could be set aside as nature preserves.

Wooki ,

Massive green hydrogen plants running on renewables now being built in Australia but hey keep being part of the problem instead of the solution.

assassin_aragorn ,

It depends a lot on where the hydrogen is sourced from. Hydrogen that is generated from electrolyzers using renewable power is completely green (and funny enough, called Green Hydrogen), and is a good way to store excess energy from solar and wind.

Oil companies however want to market hydrogen from drilling and refining, which is dirty as hell.

It’s an important differentiation to make though. Hydrogen is not inherently bad and will have plenty of green applications. We just have to make sure it’s coming from the right places.

Grimy ,

Sadly almost all hydrogen currently making its way to market is dirty. I have high hopes for it in the future but it seems like thinly veiled poison at the moment.

And this article is definitely about the dirty kind or at least feels like it is.

assassin_aragorn ,

There’s companies working on it! We’re just broke

And yes, this is definitely the dirty kind. It may still be an improvement on using natural gas directly, but there would need to be a fairly comprehensive analysis to tell for sure. One possible advantage though is we could start building up a hydrogen infrastructure that we can then feed green hydrogen into and completely replace the dirty hydrogen.

Anyway though, you’re right to be skeptical. It’s important though to look into the details to determine if it’s legitimately green energy or if it’s just oil companies greenwashing. We need to shun the latter while we promote the former.

(There is a grey area, and it’s the same as electric cars – if we’re using electricity from the grid to power cars, and electrolyzers which make hydrogen, is it truly green? I would say this is acceptable for the same reason EVs are acceptable. It’ll become completely emission free once the grid is run on renewables.)

GissaMittJobb ,

and is a good way to store excess energy from solar and wind.

Is it really that good of a storage method, though? The round-trip efficiency is quite bad when compared to other methods of storage.

CrimeDad OP ,

“That good of a storage method” in terms of what, arbitrage? We should be producing hydrogen for the practical and environmental benefits of having emissions-free vehicle fuel (that avoids the problems of battery production and disposal), steel, and fertilizer.

GissaMittJobb ,

I don’t see any good reason why the merits of hydrogen for vehicle fuel would be any better than production and disposal of batteries. The other cases I agree that hydrogen will have a useful niche.

CrimeDad OP ,

This article is a little old, but it explains the problems on the disposal side pretty well. This one covers the production side. Hydrogen powered vehicles avoid all that.

assassin_aragorn ,

We’ll need it anyway to produce existing chemical materials sustainably. It may not be the best energy carrier nor most efficient, but it shines in specific applications. Vehicles are a promising example.

GissaMittJobb ,

There are some use-cases where hydrogen will be useful, but I don’t think storage is one of them. Nor do I think vehicles are a particularly good use-case either, as compared to just iterating on battery technology.

RarePossum ,

Acording to this paper/article, its better than technologies such as batteries, but the study isn’t the most comprehensive and doesn’t consider things like pump hydro.

GissaMittJobb ,

It’s hard to assess the validity of those claims as the article doesn’t bring any numbers and the paper itself is paywalled. As the fossil fuel industry is pushing hard towards wedging in hydrogen as a means of keeping themselves alive for a while longer, it’s vital to be able to assess the actual claims, lest they are just planted there by the fossil fuel industry.

Devdogg ,

Yeah, something about this screams at me it’s not right.

Why wouldn’t this work? What would go wrong?

Mongostein ,

Producing hydrogen from natural gas still releases carbon in to the air.

CrimeDad OP ,

…which is the whole reason for doing the SMR within the natural reservoir and leaving the CO2 in there.

Mongostein , (edited )

We could just give up on the idea that natural gas is “clean.”

CrimeDad OP ,

That used to be my thinking, but there’s a lot of natural gas ready to be exploited and we need hydrogen. Therefore, methods like the one described in the article as well as ex situ methane pyrolysis are worth investigating.

corsicanguppy ,

but there’s a lot of natural gas ready to be exploited

Sooooo money. That’s the exception to doing the right thing?

CrimeDad OP ,

You forgot to quote the rest of that sentence. We need hydrogen, which is easy to get from natural gas, of which there is a lot. The right thing to do is figure out how to use it without emitting greenhouse gases. The problem is the same whether we’re under the current mode of production or some hypothetical moneyless condition.

weirdingmodule ,

What could possibly go wrong?

CrimeDad OP ,

This worst case scenario is probably the same as with any reservoir of natural gas (a massive leak and explosion), which is all the more reason to convert it to hydrogen and sequester the weaker, non-flammable GHG byproduct in situ.

Wispy2891 ,

I imagine that suddenly all the co2 stored as gas underground could suddenly come out and being odorless, kills the whole neighboring town

NOT_RICK ,
@NOT_RICK@lemmy.world avatar

Natural gas is also odorless and able to displace oxygen so I don’t see how it being CO2 underground instead of natural gas changes anything from a risk perspective. Maybe because the molecules are smaller and thus more prone to leaks? I’m admittedly way out of my depth here.

Wispy2891 ,

Methane is lighter than air and goes up while co2 is heavier than oxygen and stays down. I don’t know maybe in case of some disaster where water leaks in the well and then pushes out the co2

I wouldn’t want to live nearby in both cases anyway

tal ,
@tal@lemmy.today avatar

I mean, all that methane coming out would probably be at least as bad, and the cavity had previously been filled with methane.

It’ll be a cavern deep under a lot of rock. If it can contain methane for zillions of years, I imagine that it can contain carbon dioxide.

Sewer_King ,

I’d be worried about the now excess co2 levels disrupting the normal saturation levels in the groundwater.

towerful ,

Sparkling water, on tap!

Sewer_King ,

It’s what plants crave I guess.

RememberTheEnding ,

xkcd.com/2929/

ianovic69 ,
@ianovic69@feddit.uk avatar

I’m no expert, but this doesn’t sound like a good idea.

CrimeDad OP ,

The alternatives are the status quo or severely restricting natural gas extraction. I won’t say the latter isn’t doable, especially if we can ramp up nuclear power capacity, but there’s a lot of baggage there. We should welcome a solution that effectively makes natural gas an emissions-free resource.

ianovic69 ,
@ianovic69@feddit.uk avatar

I wouldn’t call carbon monoxide a good side product. If the amount created is negligible then great, but are there realistic figures?

Delta_V ,

Also, its probably safe to assume the producers will lie about how much they’re allowing to leak into the air.

corsicanguppy ,

You’re cheating by using trends to predict this. :-p

CrimeDad OP ,

I don’t understand what you mean. As described in the article, the process leaves the CO trapped in the ground.

ianovic69 ,
@ianovic69@feddit.uk avatar

Yes, the article says that but I’m not sure how much I believe it. If there’s a decent body of work that draws consensus I would be less sceptical.

CrimeDad OP ,

Not sure what direction to point you in. Gas storage in geological formations has been successfully practiced in the helium and natural gas industries for a while. Subterranean storage of carbon dioxide has also been successfully demonstrated. Apparently, there’s a big gas field being used for this purpose off the coast of Norway since 1996.

ianovic69 ,
@ianovic69@feddit.uk avatar

Keeping in mind I have zero knowledge of what you’re telling me about, but these examples don’t include anything about carbon monoxide.

If the similarities to the other gases are close enough to mean that it can be safely stored using the same techniques, then I’m inclined to feel a lot less worried about the whole thing.

But I don’t really trust these sectors to act on our behalf, only to make profit line go up. Lying and bribing appears to be part of that, as can be seen all around us these days.

CrimeDad OP ,

I’m unaware of any examples of subterranean carbon monoxide storage. However, underground helium storage has been done successfully for a while. Helium is one of the best gases at leaking because of its small size, which should provide some reassurance as to the storage of larger gases underground.

I agree that greed and corporate malfeasance are a thing, but it’s kind of a separate problem. The government is either going to enforce environmental regulations and manage our resources properly or it’s not.

ianovic69 ,
@ianovic69@feddit.uk avatar

Well, that sounds promising at least.

If you don’t think those things are very much related, may I suggest reading this post on Lemmy today.

The levels of corruption aimed at climate denial and in furthering fossil fuels is frightening.

CrimeDad OP ,

For sure. The fossil fuel industry is absolutely insidious.

tal ,
@tal@lemmy.today avatar

I won’t say the latter isn’t doable, especially if we can ramp up nuclear power capacity

We could do both and hedge our bets.

CrimeDad OP ,

Yes. I mean, I don’t think we’re getting anywhere without a war economy build-out of nuclear power capacity regardless.

xodoh74984 , (edited )

First of all, they spelled Heelys wrong. Second, Heelys are a great idea, even better as an adult in an office with polished concrete floors.

corsicanguppy ,

So heely wheels deliberately pluralize wrong?

xodoh74984 ,

Yep. It bothers me, but I respect the decision.

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