Researchers explore ways of producing hydrogen from rocks
In Texas, The University of Texas at Austin reported that researchers at the university are exploring a suite of natural catalysts to help produce hydrogen gas from iron-rich rocks without emitting carbon dioxide. If the scientists are successful, the project could jump-start a brand-new type of hydrogen industry: geologic hydrogen, UT said. “We’re producing hydrogen from rocks,” said Toti Larson, a research associate professor at the UT Jackson School of Geosciences Bureau of Economic Geology and the lead researcher on the project. “It’s a type of non-fossil fuel production of hydrogen from iron-rich rocks that has never been attempted at an industrial scale.” The research team recently received a $1.7 million grant from the Department of Energy and is collaborating with scientists at the University of Wyoming’s School of Energy Resources to explore the feasibility of this process on different rock types across the United States. Researchers have already conducted successful tests at the laboratory scale. The grant, from the Department of Energy Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), will be used to scale up the experiments and test the process on a broad range of iron-rich rock types found across North America.
