Abstract

Hydrogen is a clean fuel which has the potential to drastically decarbonize the energy supply chain. However, hydrogen storage is currently a key challenge; one solution to this problem is hydrogen geo-storage, with which very large quantities of H2 can be stored economically. Possible target formations are deep coal seams, and coal permeability is a key parameter which determines how fast H2 can be injected and withdrawn again. However, it is well known that gas injection into coal can lead to coal swelling, which drastically reduces permeability. We thus injected H2 gas into a coal core and measured dynamic permeability, while imaging the core via x-ray micro-tomography at reservoir conditions. Importantly, no changes in coal cleat morphology or permeability were observed. We conclude that H2 geo-storage in deep coal seams is feasible from a fundamental petro-physical perspective; this work thus aids in the large-scale implementation of a hydrogen economy.

RAS ID

52046

Document Type

Journal Article

Date of Publication

3-28-2022

Volume

49

Issue

6

Funding Information

Australian Federal Government / Australian Research Council. Grant Number: DP220102907 / Royal Society. Grant Number: UF160443

School

School of Engineering

Grant Number

ARC Number : DP220102907

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Publisher

American Geophysical Union

Comments

Iglauer, S., Akhondzadeh, H., Abid, H., Paluszny, A., Keshavarz, A., Ali, M., ... & Lebedev, M. (2022). Hydrogen flooding of a coal core: effect on coal swelling. Geophysical Research Letters, 49(6), e2021GL096873. https://doi.org/10.1029/2021GL096873

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Link to publisher version (DOI)

10.1029/2021GL096873