I’m thinking... adding hydrogen to the atmosphere when it was not there before will cause it to combine with oxygen to form water. I wonder how much newly discovered hydrogen can be reacted in this manner before the free O2 content of the air starts to drop?
Fossil fuels have the advantage that their elemental components were all part of the biosphere before they became fossil fuels. Production of CO2 from burning the fossil fuels leads to increased plant growth, with the release of O2 into the air as a byproduct of converting CO2 into biological molecules through photosynthesis. And eventually all of that biomatter ends up converting back into fossil fuels.
But free H2... I don’t see right away where this has ever been part of the biosphere. I’m not a geologist, but it seems like maybe that was a pocket formed during the formation of the earth? Before going all gung-ho about extracting it, I’d want to do some heavy calculations to make sure the effect of using it will have minimal impact on the ratios of the various elements in the biosphere and atmosphere.
Elemental hydrogen leaves the Earth’s atmosphere and floats off into space driven by the solar wind.............
You don't understand: The hydrogen will not simply "escape" into the atmosphere, nor will it be "allowed" to combine with the oxygen in the atmosphere to form water. Rather, the hydrogen will be combusted in a controlled fashion (e.g., as fuel in the engines of motor vehicles, or in home heating furnaces, or in large electrical power plants, or in modular fuel cells), thus releasing energy and forming water vapor.
But free H2... I don’t see right away where this has ever been part of the biosphere. I’m not a geologist, but it seems like maybe that was a pocket formed during the formation of the earth? Before going all gung-ho about extracting it, I’d want to do some heavy calculations to make sure the effect of using it will have minimal impact on the ratios of the various elements in the biosphere and atmosphere.
You're kidding, right?
The article speaks of their being 46 million tons of elemental hydrogen in this new find. That's literally a drop in the ocean!
One mol of elemental H2 (with a mass of 2 grams and a volume of 22.4 liters at Standard Temperature and Pressure) combine with one-half mol of O2 (with a mass of 16 grams and a volume of 11.2 liters at STP) to form one mol of H2O (with a mass of 18 grams and a volume of 22.4 liters at STP).
Thus, to completely "burn" 46 million tons of hydrogen gas, you'd need to consume eight times as much O2, i.e., 368 million tons of atmospheric oxygen. This chemical reaction would produce 414 million tons of water. NYC's Central Park contains roughly 3.8 million tons of water, so we're talking about 109 times its volume of water.
This is also equivalent to about one one-thousandth of the volume of Lake Erie.
Satisfied?
Regards,