A discovery of naturally forming hydrogen by Quebec Innovative Materials Corp. (QI Materials) may be among the first in Canada to be tapped as a source for clean fuel.

The team behind the Vancouver-headquartered mineral explorer and developer discovered hydrogen in the soil of Quebec's St-Bruno-de-Guigues municipality, Lake Timiskaming, that lies along the provincial border with Ontario.

Geological studies were conducted by QI Materials and its partner Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique (INRS) during the summer, which uncovered how hydrogen is formed in the region.

Though potential commercialization efforts or the amount of hydrogen are still to be determined, QI Materials told Sustainable Biz Canada there is likely a significant amount. The company believes it could be extracted and used to help decarbonize industries with lower environmental costs than industrially produced hydrogen.

Inspired by the Quebec government’s hydrogen agenda announced in 2022, QI Materials “decided that this was a tremendous opportunity for us and for the province of Quebec to help achieve its low-emission goals,” John Karagiannidis, CEO of QI Materials, said in an interview.

Getting ‘gold’ hydrogen out of the ground

Karagiannidis said naturally extracted hydrogen, called “gold” or “white” hydrogen, is the most sustainable option to produce the clean fuel. Unlike common methods that process natural gas or use energy-intensive electrolyzers to output green hydrogen, there is minimal environmental impact and infrastructure is simple, he continued.

“The beauty with clean, naturally renewing hydrogen is that very small to no environmental footprint, and you can use current, existing technology – pipes and tubes that are already existing. So you’re not reinventing the wheel to do any type of extraction here.”

Such a discovery is new to Canada, the CEO said. Natural hydrogen deposits have been discovered in Mali, France, Australia, Morocco and the U.S., Yale Environment 360 reports. Work is underway to find other sites in Canada.

"Gold" hydrogen does not come without potential concerns, however. Yale Environment 360 writes it may not be economically viable, and leaking hydrogen could indirectly warm the climate.

QI Materials’ Ville Marie discovery

QI Materials and INRS, a Quebec research institution and university, are using the work of professor Marc Richer-Lafleche, who developed a model that can detect hydrogen in soil samples. Based on the geological features of a fault system, the rocks and the neighbouring lake, St-Bruno-de-Guigues was deemed a likely candidate for hydrogen generation, John Karagiannidis explained.

A chemical reaction between water (a compound of hydrogen and oxygen) and basement rocks that are rich in iron, potassium and ultramafic minerals take out the oxygen and leave behind hydrogen that seeps into the soil.

The method was applied in the approximately 250-square-kilometre area north of the town of Ville Marie. Five parallel lines spanning five to seven kilometres that are tapped into every 50 metres for sampling run from east to west, separated by around two to 2.7 kilometres. A 9.7-kilometre line runs north to south, intersecting with the five horizontal lines.

In Line 1, soil samples returned hydrogen concentrations between 150 to 300 parts per million (PPM), which is a relatively high figure, Karagiannidis said. This compares to exploratory efforts for a site in France’s Pyrenees Mountains that uncovered under 100 PPM for 70 per cent of its samples, while 70 per cent of QI Materials’ results range from 150 to 200 PPM, he explained.

The studies are preliminary, and firm estimates of how much hydrogen is in the site or how much could be extracted remains unknown.

Two more hydrogen assets are owned by QI Materials: one in the Lac Saint-Jean region of central Quebec, and another in the Gaspe Bay area.

What commercialization could look like

The hydrogen in St-Bruno-de-Guigues could be extracted by capturing it at the surface or drilling into the underground reservoirs, Karagiannidis said. Commercialization would likely entail using the local infrastructure, gaining the assent of the local community and having the Quebec government involved, he added.

Once the hydrogen is extracted, it could be transported to a secondary facility in the region to be processed for transportation via trucks, or used to make ammonia.

Sheldon Inwentash, chairman and CEO of ThreeD Capital Inc., a Toronto-based venture capital firm with a stake in QI Materials, told Sustainable Biz Canada injection into natural gas pipelines would not be a particularly viable option because retrofitting the local infrastructure to accommodate such a change would be very costly.

Large international companies in the hydrogen industry have reached out to QI Materials for more information about its discovery, Inwentash said. “It’s all early days, but the response we’ve had has been very positive from the right people that understand how to commercialize hydrogen,” he added.

Karagiannidis said there will be more geophysical and seismic work to determine the extent of the deposit.

He could not offer an idea of when the exploration will finish, but said it would be in the near term.