KDSN RADIO News
Testing in northwest Iowa for natural hydrogen trapped underground
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A Colorado-based company will soon begin testing in Carroll County as it searches for hydrogen trapped underground. Scientists say natural hydrogen could be a source of clean energy.
Chris Justice, a representative of Twin Rivers Exploration, says a truck that’s a little smaller than a garbage truck is used for what they call “vibro-seismic” testing.
“It has a plate, maybe three feet in diameter. It gently lowers this plate to the ground and then it will shake and send kind of a vibration through the ground,” he says. “We place sensors along the road that will pick up the signals of how these vibrations bounce off of different geologic formations, which will pick up which will allow us to map out underground formations.”
Twin Rivers Exploration recently completed land surveys in Webster County and the company has mapped out a five-mile-square grid to survey, with the small Carroll County town of Lidderdale at its center. Scientists say when iron-rich rocks come into contact with water deep underground, hydrogen is generated, the hydrogen can get trapped under a dome.
“The hydrogen should come out of the ground on its own. Hydrogen, being a gas, it should flow out freely,” Justice says. “What you’d be looking at is about a five foot tall wellhead that sits on about a five acre pad.”
There’s only one well in the world currently collecting natural hydrogen from underground and it’s in Mali, a country on the west side of the African continent. Drilling for hydrogen is underway in Europe, South America and in Nebraska and Kansas. Justice says there would be a fairly large boost to the local economy if his company finds underground hydrogen in Carroll County.
“Depending on the quantity, we would probably it use it for ammonia to help make fertilizer. Hydrogen is a major component of ammonia that is right now created through very expensive means, so it would help the fertilizer industry quite a bit,” Justice says. “If we found it in greater quantities there could be applications in electricity and, in enormous quantities, even transportation.”
Justice says the company’s trucks should arrive in Carroll County around August 19th and crews should complete their work in the area by the end of the month. The trucks will move at a one-mile-per-hour pace and the company will have people redirecting traffic, if necessary.
