Abstract
In Kazakhstan, options and regions for hydrogen production are being considered, including in Western Kazakhstan, the Mangystau region, using the water of the Caspian Lake. The current advanced hydrogen production technologies, including green hydrogen, are very expensive, requiring billions of dollars of investment and potentially creating difficulties for the local population and nature, ecology, flora and fauna. At the same time, geological studies of alternative hydrogen production options in Kazakhstan are poorly developed. Kazakhstan needs and is currently very important to study serpentinization of ophiolite rocks using natural «white» hydrogen. In many countries, there is practically a «gold rush» now, hydrogeologists are conducting research on the search for natural «white» hydrogen. Hydrogeologists have now discovered numerous sources of natural hydrogen in geological environments from Mali to Switzerland, France, Germany, the USA, Canada, and Australia. More than 50 companies have sprung up to discover and mine it. A natural hydrogen well operates in Mali to provide energy to a local city with a population of about 4,000 people for free and forever. Unlike other geological fuels, which are formed over millions of years, natural hydrogen is generated by mixing water and iron particles, serpentinization of ophiolite rocks, and is renewable on the scale of human time, and not in geological epochs. Alternative options for the production and use of hydrogen are presented in this review, including various types of hydrogen, black, gray, green, blue, turquoise, pink and yellow, depending on the method of its extraction and production. Kazakhstan, with the richest natural ore reserves, including coal and polymetals, where ophiolite rocks may be located, may well have deposits of natural «white» hydrogen, such geological studies in Kazakhstan are poorly developed.