Principal Investigator Iwnetim (Tim) Abate
Project Start Date April 2024
A green energy future will depend on harnessing hydrogen as a clean energy source, sequestering polluting carbon dioxide, and mining the minerals essential to building clean energy technologies such as advanced batteries. Professor Iwnetim Abate thinks he has a solution for all three challenges: an innovative hydrogen reactor.
He plans to build a reactor that will create natural hydrogen from ultramafic mineral rocks in the crust. The reactor envisioned by Abate injects water to create a reaction that releases hydrogen, while also supporting the injection of climate-altering carbon dioxide into the rock, providing a global carbon capacity of 100 trillion tons. At the same time, the reactor process could provide essential elements such as lithium, nickel, and cobalt -- some of the most important raw materials used in advanced batteries and electronics.