Definitely something you don't see every day.
From Ars Technica, September 30:
A drill site in Lorraine shows rising levels of hydrogen mixed in with methane.
On the outskirts of the small town of Folschviller in eastern France stand three nondescript sheds. One of these temporary structures has recently become a hive of activity due to a continuous stream of visitors, including scientists, journalists, and the public.
The shed sits above a borehole first drilled in 2006 and houses a gas measurement system called SysMoG, which was originally developed to determine the underground methane concentration. While the device did detect almost pure methane (99 percent) at a depth of 650 meters, probing further down, the borehole resulted in an unexpected and surprising discovery: hydrogen in high concentration. “At 1,100 meters, the concentration of dissolved hydrogen is 14 percent. At 3,000 meters, the estimated concentration could be as high as 90 percent,” Jacques Pironon, director of research at GeoRessources lab at the Université de Lorraine, said.
Based on the estimates of methane resources and the concentration of hydrogen detected so far, scientists have conjectured that the Lorraine region in eastern France, of which Folschviller is a part, could contain 46 million tons of white—or naturally produced—hydrogen. That would make it one of the world’s largest known hydrogen deposits.
Looking for something else
This remarkable discovery was not the objective of the project, called Regalor. Instead, it aimed to determine the feasibility of methane production in the Lorraine region and to record the presence of traces of other gases. “Our original research was related to the study of carboniferous sediments in northeast France. This was important as Lorraine was one of France’s largest coal-producing regions,” Pironon said.According to Pironon, after coal production ended in Lorraine in 2004, a company called Francaise de L’Energie proposed sourcing methane from the region’s vast coal fields. Following this, the regional government sought the expertise of Laboratoire GeoRessources to determine if such a project was realistic.
“As a part of this project, we developed a new tool with the French-Swiss company called Solexperts. It consists of a patented probe SysMoG that can be lowered by a logging winch to depths of 1,500 meters,” he said....
....MUCH MORE
