Dr. Sai Wang of the PRRC

Petroleum Recovery Research Center at New Mexico Tech, collaborating with Los Alamos National Laboratory, has been selected to receive $1.3M in funding from the U.S. Department of Energy Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E). The funding is part of ARPA-E’s Exploratory Topics related to geologic hydrogen, which aim to explore early-stage research and development to advance low-cost, low-emissions hydrogen.

The Exploratory Topic G: Production of Geologic Hydrogen through Stimulated Mineralogical Processes seeks technologies that stimulate hydrogen production from mineral deposits found in the subsurface, including developing understanding of hydrogen-producing geochemical reactions and how to enhance or control the rate of hydrogen production. This is the first time that the U.S. government has competitively selected teams to research this kind of technology.

The proposed GeoHydRA project (geochemical and hydromechanical stimulation for reaction acceleration) will explore early-stage research and development to advance low-cost, low-emissions hydrogen, which will help create good-paying jobs and new economic opportunities in communities across the nation while also helping meet President Biden’s ambitious climate and decarbonization goals.

“Engineering geological hydrogen production from serpentinization could potentially enable the production of substantial amounts of clean energy, but many technical barriers exist,” said Dr. Sai Wang, an interim section head from PRRC and the lead Principle Investigator at NMT on this grant.

“Here, we propose technologies to stimulate geological hydrogen by enhancing and sustaining sufficient reaction surface areas in in-situ olivine-rich ultramafic rocks. Our proposal embraces laboratory experiments and numerical modeling that combine and couple the state of the knowledge in geochemistry, geomechanics, fracture mechanics, and porous media flow. We will deliver key knowledges and multiscale numerical modeling tools towards engineering geological hydrogen generation,” said Dr. Wang.

The overall objective of this project is to develop a method to increase the production rate of stimulated hydrogen through promoting hierarchical cracks in reactant rock formations. The proposed work would enhance the injection design and fluid chemistry to ensure that hydrogen production rates do not decrease quickly over time, as prior laboratory experiments and numerical modeling have suggested.

The grant was awarded under the Department of Energy Funding Opportunity Announcement, DE-FOA-0002784. The title of the grant application is “Geochemical and Hydromechanical Stimulation for Reaction Acceleration (GeoHydRA) of Serpentinization for In Situ Hydrogen Production.”

Details are available at https://arpa-e.energy.gov/document/geologic-hydrogen-project-descriptions