The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
North of 60 Mining News - October 28, 2024
The Department of Energy's ARPA-E is investing in the exploration of geological hydrogen in the U.S.
A belt of rocks spanning the Southeast Alaska Panhandle hosts at least a dozen prospects and deposits enriched with nickel, copper, and platinum group metals (PGM) needed for the energy transition. Could these projects also host hidden stores of geological hydrogen that could offer a clean-burning fuel for the 21st century? Granite Creek Copper Ltd. believes they could and has acquired two Southeast Alaska PGM projects with "white hydrogen" potential.
An element that only emits water vapor when burned, hydrogen is seen by many as a game-changing clean energy fuel of the 21st century. However, hydrogen has the paradoxical distinction of being the most abundant element in the universe, yet very rare in its pure form here on Earth.
Being the lightest of elements on the periodic table, any pure hydrogen on Earth tends to escape the atmosphere. Most of the hydrogen that remains is locked up with other elements in water, hydrocarbons, and other forms.
Splitting hydrogen from water or natural gas, however, requires a lot of energy that comes with both financial and carbon emissions costs.
The grey hydrogen currently being split off natural gas for fertilizers, chemicals, and steel production costs about $2 per kilogram to produce and has a significant carbon footprint that cuts into its clean energy fuel potential.
Green hydrogen, which is split off of water molecules using renewable, does not come with inherent CO2 emissions but costs around $7/kg to produce – way too expensive to be a practical solution to fueling global commerce.
"If you get hydrogen at a dollar a kilo, it's competitive with natural gas on an energy-price basis," said Douglas Wicks, a program director at the U.S. Department of Energy's Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E).
Geological hydrogen, a process that involves iron-rich rock formations producing hydrogen naturally, could be the solution.
The U.S. Geological Survey estimates there are potentially billions of tons of geologic hydrogen, also known as white hydrogen, buried in the Earth's crust.
Granite Creek believes that PGM projects in Alaska and British Columbia have the right conditions to host hidden deposits of geological hydrogen and has acquired two such projects on the Southeast Alaska Panhandle – Duke Island and Union Bay.
To position itself among the first movers in the emerging white hydrogen space, Granite Creek has teamed up with Cornell University, which recently received a U.S. Department of Energy ARPA-E grant to study the potential geologic hydrogen.
A team led by Greeshma Gadikota, an associate professor who directs the Sustainable Energy and Resource Recovery Group at Cornell, is working with Granite Creek to study the geological hydrogen potential of the Duke Island and Union Bay projects.
"Our team looks forward to this collaboration with Granite Creek on strategies to stimulate geologic hydrogen production, with an emphasis on exploring the ultramafic resources in Alaska," she said.
Stimulated geological hydrogen leverages catalysts found naturally in the ground to speed up Earth's ability to naturally produce hydrogen.
Artificial hydrogen is split off water, natural gas, or other sources using catalysts such as PGMs or nickel. This process also occurs naturally in Earth's crust, but usually at a slow rate, and in most cases, the clean-burning fuel escapes too fast to accumulate in economic deposits.
Scientists, however, believe they can generate larger volumes of hydrogen from these rocks by stimulating reactions that would take millions of years to occur naturally.
"Stimulated geologic H2 can decarbonize the supply chain of fuels and can play a major role in the energy transition," said Gadikota. "We see the potential for multi-use approach to these types of projects including critical metal recovery, durable carbon storage, and geologic hydrogen production."
Granite Creek's newly acquired Duke Island and Union Bay projects have the two main ingredients required for white hydrogen – catalysts and water.
"We see the potential for multi-use approach to these types of projects including critical metal recovery, durable carbon storage, and geologic hydrogen production," said Gadikota.
Lying within the Alexander Platinum Belt about 30 miles southeast of Ketchikan, Alaska, Duke Island has long been known for its stores of copper, nickel, and PGMs. Historical exploration on the property has turned up surface samples with grades as high as 1.95% copper, 0.25% nickel, and more than 1 g/t PGMs.
While several prospective zones have been discovered based on geologic mapping, surface geochemistry, and surface and airborne geophysics, only one of these zones has been tested to date with 3,434 meters of drilling in 16 holes. Granite Creek says this drilling has not tested the prospective basal contact of the intrusion where the highest grades of Cu-Ni-PGE sulfide mineralization are inferred to occur.
Granite Creek has entered into an agreement to acquire 90% interest in Duke Island from Stillwater Critical Minerals Inc., which is a fellow company under the Metallic Group of Companies umbrella, for C$150,000 ($108,000) in shares and a commitment to invest at least C$500,000 ($360,000) in exploration over three years. Stillwater will retain a 1% net smelter return on Dukes Island, half of which can be acquired by Granite Creek for C$1 million ($720,000).
Located on an island about 35 miles northwest of Ketchikan, Union Bay hosts classic "Ural-Alaska-type" ultramafic rocks famed for their PGM potential. Mapping, sampling, geophysics, and drilling have identified high-grade platinum targets on this project.
Granite Creek was able to pick up Union Bay by staking 20 mineral claims over the project.
"We are very excited to have acquired these projects in Alaska and are proud to collaborate with Dr. Gadikota and her team at Cornell as we add geologic hydrogen to our critical mineral exploration efforts," said Johnson.
Granite Creek's exploration of geological hydrogen in Southeast Alaska follows an announcement earlier this month that it is collaborating with New England Research Inc., a Vermont-based research and development company that recently received a $1.5 million DOE ARPA-E grant, to study geological hydrogen on the company's Star PGM project in Northern B.C.
"We have begun putting the pieces in place, both in terms of projects and global expertise, to position ourselves among the select few first movers in this important new space," the Granite Creek CEO added.
EDITOR'S NOTE: This article was orignally published under the headline "Exploring Alaska for geological hydrogen" in the Oct. 30, 2024 edition of Metal Tech News, a Data Mine North publication that delivers the news and insights into technology metals and mining technologies.
Over his more than 16 years of covering mining and mineral exploration, Shane has become renowned for his ability to report on the sector in a way that is technically sound enough to inform industry insiders while being easy to understand by a wider audience.
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