> Once inside the well, the microbes began breaking down the residual oil hydrocarbons in there—dregs that would be unprofitable to extract—to generate hydrogen and CO2.

So brown hydrogen, then.

"gold hydrogen"

My god the hydrocarbon industry is shameless. "Our hydrogen got dumped on with this color grading system." "Not with out gold tier ultra premium deluxe hydrogen."

And what happens to the carbon that hydrogen is bonded to?

>Capturing or otherwise neutralizing the CO2 must be done safely, says Stephen Wallace, who runs a microbiology lab at the University of Edinburgh. But he adds that Cemvita Factory’s idea of

OK so no plans.

The most inexpensive thing possible will happen. This is grey hydrogen with branding.

Have we not learnt: "to generate hydrogen and CO2."

"a biotech firm in Texas, had spritzed a carefully selected combination of bacteria"

Would this spritz be measured in gallons or tons?

As much as it's worth considering the co2 byproduct and it's affect, doesn't pumping large volumes of liquids into the earth like this lead to all sorts of unintended consequences as well?

Yeah, this is just another flavor of blue hydrogen -- h2 generated in a way that releases co2 and they're suuuuper sure they'll figure out a way to capture it.

Hydrogen tech is just a scam to greenwash the legacy fossil fuels industry.

I don't get the strong opposition to it. Yes, CO2 is a byproduct. And yes, that CO2 might leak out of the wells. But it would still be much better than the status quo, which is hydrogen from fossil fuels, with the CO2 being emitted 100%.

Hydrogen is very much needed for chemical synthesis (ammonia for fertiliser), and can also be used to make steel. Using this would be much better than blue hydrogen. A good pragmatic solution until we have green hydrogen.

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Just going to say it, anyone using the mystery colour labels in their comments here, comes off to me (and I suspect others) as combinations of joking, obfuscating and even a little condescending since I’m familiar with the use of this sort of linguistic abstraction as a mechanism for gatekeeping, limiting the size of the audience that can speak to those that have kept up with current shibboleths.

Blue, black, green, grey, white, translucent, gold, purple polka dot… this is a stupid way to name things…

If it’s hydrogen derived from oil by industrial petrochemical processes like steam reforming or catalytic cracking, can we just use these terms… it’s not like we’re trying to explain which pump handles to fill up a car with, we’re talking about issues with a proposed concept and obfuscation of what that concept truly is and what it’s competing against, with cutesy colours labels… frankly just puts me off the entire hydrogen industry …

Hydrogen is pretty easy to get ahold of chemically speaking because it’s everywhere. If we need to differentiate let’s just use the additional nouns necessary. “Hydrogen from Electrolysis powered by Carbon Neutral electricity” and “Hydrogen by thermochemical decomposition of organic waste powered by Carbon Neutral fuels” are ecologically better than “Hydrogen from Electrolysis powered by Coal” and “Hydrogen captured as a waste gas from existing oil refineries, with no other effort to reduce Carbon emissions“

I don’t normally come across a HN thread that reads so “cliquey” outside of the crypto community stuff… seeing this sort of stuff about Hydrogen is just weird.

If this produces co2, then doesn’t this make the entire case for hydrogen pointless?

The numbers :

    Their cost : $1 / kg of H.
    Other's cost : $1.5 / kg on average.
    1 kg H is equivalent to 1 gallon of petroleum fuel in energy.

An innovative energy tech that increases co2 emissions is not that exciting. Kind of hope it is not economical. Unless they can trap it but not sure how.

'Gold hydrogen'? Sounds like the marketing term 'clean coal'.

Stuff like this is why the fossil fuel industry keeps pushing for hydrogen rather than solar + batteries as a replacement for the current fuel system.

Hydrogen can be created cleanly, but once the infrastructure is in place, the cheapest and most profitable sources will all be fossil fuel sites, depleted or otherwise.

I'm glad electric cars are already taking off. Hydrogen may have a future for storage for excess renewable energy eventually, but as a simple replacement for gas tanks it's simply dangerous.

"Hydrogen, which releases zero carbon emissions"

Except the article already stated the Co2 is already emitted as part of the process of breaking down these hydrocarbons (club being in their name) -

"microbes began breaking down the residual oil hydrocarbons in there—dregs that would be unprofitable to extract—to generate hydrogen and CO2."