The Strategic Relevance of Stimulated Production of Geologic Hydrogen
Hydrogen is emerging as a central pillar of the global energy transition - a clean, versatile energy carrier capable of decarbonizing hard-to-abate sectors such as heavy industry, transportation, and energy storage. While green and blue hydrogen dominate current discussions, geologic hydrogen—naturally occurring hydrogen formed through geological processes—has emerged as a promising alternative. Stimulated geologic hydrogen, which harnesses and accelerates these geological processes, holds significant further promise by effectively addressing scalability, cost-efficiency, and environmental challenges. Among the companies advancing this technology, GeoRedox is uniquely positioned to lead the way.
Geologic hydrogen is formed primarily through natural subsurface processes such as the serpentinization reaction between water and ultramafic rocks. If there are sufficiently tight traps overlying porous formations situated above the regions where these reactions occur, this geologic hydrogen might be produced much like conventional hydrocarbon systems. Dozens of companies are exploring for such reservoir geologic hydrogen.
In principle, such reservoirs might be expected to yield low-cost and low-carbon, but they face challenges - including low pressure, limited size, high levels of contamination, and limited geographic distribution. These greatly increase exploration risks, cause delays, and can significantly increase production costs. GeoRedox is pursuing a different path.
Geologic Hydrogen:
A Game-Changer in Clean Energy
Stimulated geologic hydrogen production involves engineering subsurface conditions to accelerate natural hydrogen-generating reactions. This is analogous to both stimulated gas production from shales and enhanced oil recovery methods developed over many decades in the oil and gas industry. Our approach builds on this well-established technological foundation.
Stimulated Geologic Hydrogen Production: Unlocking Scalability
No porous reservoirs or tight traps required:
By injecting fluids directly into closed reactive rock formations, stimulated production circumvents the need to find reservoirs and seals, which greatly expands the range of geologies where hydrogen can be produced: High-quality, tight seals with suitable reservoir rocks below are much less widely distributed than the common source rocks we produce from such as peridotites, ophiolites, basalts, and sedimentary rocks containing ferrous iron.
Widely distributed source rocks – just add water:
A conventional geologic hydrogen system requires substantial water to be flowing through the source rock to generate useful amounts of hydrogen. Stimulated production actively provides this water, and so can be applied to wet or dry formations, vastly expanding the number of potential production sites globally. With controlled water injection, stimulation can increase the amount of hydrogen feeding into conventional reservoirs, greatly increasing their production above the natural rate, and maintaining production over decades. It can also be used to produce hydrogen at the wellhead without the need for a reservoir.
Lower cost and risk:
By exploiting widely available rocks and formations, stimulation greatly reduces exploration costs, and productions risk compared to conventional extraction.
GeoRedox is distinguished in the geologic hydrogen field by its innovative approach to stimulated production.
GeoRedox: An Emerging Leader in Stimulated Geologic Hydrogen
We engineer the subsurface environment to initiate and radically accelerate natural hydrogen-generating reactions.
Further, our production process is uniquely controllable and cost effective, leading to greatly stable hydrogen production rates for well under 1 USD/kg at the well head from a variety of source rocks.
Advanced Weathering Enhancement (AWE)
Continuous Long-Term Production:
Our Advanced Weathering Enhancement (AWE) approach sustains a proprietary chemo-mechanical process that vastly accelerates reaction rates above those found in nature. Thus, our recovery factors are vastly larger than natural production. And unlike wells drilled into hydrogen reservoirs, our wells can produce for decades at predictable rates.
Scalability Across Geological Settings:
AWE is applicable to any ferrous iron containing rock that chemically reduces water, simultaneously oxidizing the available ferrous iron (Fe2+) in the source rock, and producing hydrogen as a byproduct. The process can be optimally engineered to site specific conditions and, while in operation can be adapted and further optimized to changing conditions based on incoming well data in a fast, AI-driven control loop. This flexibility will enable us to create a network of prolific hydrogen production sites close to offtakers across the globe.
Minimal Energy Inputs and Maximum Cost Efficiency
Unlike green hydrogen, which requires substantial electricity for electrolysis, GeoRedox’s method leverages natural geochemical processes, requiring little to no external energy input and eliminating almost all of the energy cost associated with dissociating water - like electrolysis without electricity. This is because the basic chemistry employed is exothermic. AWE is even able to capture excess reaction heat along with the hydrogen we generate to drive industrial processes of generate electricity at the surface.
AWE does not require the injection of external catalysts, with their associated costs and environmental risks. However, when they are present, it can take advantage of naturally present metal containing minerals that can act as in-situ catalysts to the hydrogen generation process, accelerating production even more.
Our Hydrogen is Inherently low cost
GeoRedox hydrogen processing techniques are generally of lower cost to an offtaker because the produced hydrogen
a) harnesses an exothermic reaction that accelerates the reactions that produce hydrogen and useful thermal energy,
b) is inherently free of most contaminants and requires little cleanup, and
c) is produced at high pressure which reduces compression costs for efficient transport via pipeline, or tube carrier.
AWE: a light environmental footprint
The typical production cell consists of typically 10-20 closely spaced wells within a single well pad with a production power density of approximately 15 kTonne H2/m2/yr, and cost of less than 1 USD/kg H2 produced. The footprint of green hydrogen is typically two orders greater, which, combined with the need for complex power infrastructure, creates significant hidden production costs.
We stimulate inorganic reactions directly in the subsurface. These reactions are inherently low (in fact zero)-carbon, and are without methane and other pollutant emissions associated with hydrocarbon-based methods like steam methane reforming (SMR). Further, by using some of our produced hydrogen and heat to produce electricity at the well-head we can essentially reduce our operating carbon footprint to zero.
And because AWE does not use injected chemical and catalysts to enhance stimulation and circulates water within a closed system, we keep the subsurface and water supply contamination-free.
Investment Grade Technology
Our controlled, low-carbon production approach is aligned with energy transition policy, but we aren’t counting on subsidies to reward our investors. We’re designed to be inherently low-cost, and low-risk without subsidies to compete with grey, and brown hydrogen in today’s 100MT/year hydrogen market.
Reduced Exploration Risks:
Exploring for reservoirs carries high exploration costs, and risks. GeoRedox’s stimulated generation largely eliminates these by creating hydrogen directly in well-characterized geological formations depths accessible to conventional drilling methods, and with well-understood engineering techniques.
Synergies through potential co-production of heat and Rare Earth or other metal Recovery:
And in addition to hydrogen and useful heat, we offer the exciting further possibility of recovering valuable byproducts such as rare earth elements from certain formations.
Predictable long term production:
With AWE, the rate of hydrogen production depends on variables within our control at the surface - not the pressure of an accumulated hydrogen reservoir. That means predictable yields and revenues per well over decades - and full-cost recovery with the possibility of a robust merchant tail.