A belt of rocks spanning Southeast Alaska hosts at least a dozen prospects and deposits enriched with nickel, copper and platinum group metals (PGM) needed for the energy transition. Granite Creek Copper, a small mining company based in Vancouver, British Columbia, believes a couple of prospects also host hidden stores of geological hydrogen that could offer a clean-burning fuel for the 21st century.
The company 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 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 financial and carbon emissions costs.
The 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 from water molecules using renewable energy, does not come with inherent carbon dioxide emissions but costs more than three times as much to produce — way too expensive to be a practical solution to fueling global commerce.
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 deposits of geological hydrogen and has acquired two such projects in the Southeast Alaska, at 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 grant to study 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.
Union Bay is about halfway between Wrangell and Ketchikan; Duke Island is south of Ketchikan.
“Our team looks forward to this collaboration with Granite Creek on strategies to stimulate geologic hydrogen production,” Gadikota 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 from 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.
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, 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 gram per ton of 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 about 11,000 feet of drilling in 16 holes.
Granite Creek has entered into an agreement to acquire 90% interest in Duke Island from Stillwater Critical Minerals, which is a fellow company under the Metallic Group of Companies umbrella, for $108,000 in shares and a commitment to invest at least $360,000 in exploration over three years.
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.
Granite Creek's exploration of geological hydrogen in Southeast Alaska follows an announcement earlier this month that it is collaborating with New England Research, a Vermont-based research and development company that recently received a $1.5 million U.S. Department of Energy grant to study geological hydrogen on the company's Star project in northern British Columbia.
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