I was asked in private email if this piece was a total spoof, or if some of it was factual. The answer is that much of it was presented to me as factual, but from a source that... let us say, has an obvious "agenda" other than scientific advancement. Without an official acknowledgement, especially from Russia, which is where the process was invented, we may never know for sure... and that is why it was presented as a spoof.
And as to the assertion. "How cheap is this new form of H2? A few Russian defectors and geologists (the one's not on corporate payrolls) say that it is already cheaper to produce H2 there than methane (if water is available locally)." This does not sound logical at first glance, given that the methane is naturally present in the earth at high pressure, and by comparison, water would need to be pumped down under pressure in order to make hydrogen from silicides, assuming they were as ubiquitous as claimed (don't have a clue). This is all new to me also, but in thinking about the total situation, it may not be that far off in hypothetical factuality. In fact geologic-hydrogen formed from pressurized water pumped down could indeed be considerably cheaper than methane- at the well-head (per btu)... if such things as exploration costs were low (i.e. if finding large silicide deposits with nearby water were no more expensive than finding natural gas). The big cost in either case is drilling the well, right? OK once that has been accomplished, methane starts to flow based on its pressure at the source, but in the case of hydrogen, energy would need to be added to the water being sent down. For hydrogen one would need to pump water down under pressure and the hydrogen returning would be pressurized based on some fraction of the pressure of the water going down. We will assume that the water is free, and that the cost of the borehole and well is about the same in either case, and the cost of necessary explosion to fracture the silicides in not significant, relative to the cost of the well. The question then resolves to how much energy in the form of methane vs energy in the form of hydrogen can be removed per unit of time from the same sized bore and well. After thinking about it for a while, I think the about 3 times more energy in the form of hydrogen can be removed, even considering that the water pipe carrying the pressurized water would take away some of the net volume from the bore hole of the hydrogen well. Natural gas wells have natural pressure ranging from 10,000 to 2000 psi but it declines over time. But water can pumped cheaply up to the strength limits of steel pipes, and one could end up with hydrogen at double or triple the average pressure of methane. Hydrogen has about three times the energy content of gasoline, propane or methane weight per unit weight. Due to its low density, however, if we compare volumes instead of masses, a liter of room temperature hydrogen has 2.7 times less energy than methane. But that is far from the end of the story as hydrogen is much more volatile and easier to pump and pressurize. I am trying to find some authoritative answers on this, but my guess is that hydrogen formed from geologic silicides is cheaper to extract than methane per btu, perhaps by a wide ratio. Not to mention that it is easy to see how this process could have been discovered accidentally, as underground explosions to rejuvenate natural gas wells are old technology, and were developed in Russia - and water or steam injection has been known and used for years in some of those 60 year old gas fields which were the aim of Hitler to steal. Perhaps on one occasion the Russians exploded some silicates deposits accidentally and got tons of hydrogen coming out, instead of methane. That does not sound far-fetched at all, nor would the fact that it is still (almost) a secret, held over from the cold war. Maybe this whole story (political overtones and all) isn't really so far-fetched after all, and maybe I should not have spoofed the idea, but why is their no good info on the net, if it is for real? ... or was that question answered in the spoof? Jones This episode, like many wild ideas which appear in the context of a fringe or off-beat new-group like vortex .... is a somewhat warped reminder of the Ted Sturgeon story called "Brownshoes," (part of "Sturgeon Is Alive and Well: A Collection of Short Stories") about a visionary hippie who invented a perpetual motion machine, and must then resort to the "unthinkable" that is to "turn establishment" (i.e. put on the brown shoes) in order to get the idea accepted by the rest of society. BTW, Theodore Sturgeon, like Phillip K. Dick and GK Chesterton are three of the great almost-unknown finds in all of "thought-provoking literature" - that classification being writers who could stun you with incredibly insightful ideas, usually in short pieces, even if their writing ability was not always the best...
