Gazprom obtains first hydrogen from Kovykta gas

MOSCOW. April 15 (Interfax) - Gazprom has produced its first hydrogen from the formation gas mixture of the Kovykta field, deputy Gazprom department head Alexander Ishkov told journalists on the sidelines of the Eurasian Oil and Gas Forum.

"We've currently extracted several liters at the Kovykta field. It's in low concentration. Special processes are required for this. Membrane technology isn't suitable for extracting pure hydrogen because of the low concentration. There's a metal hydride technology - you pass a mixture of methane, helium and hydrogen, and the hydrogen bonds with a specific metal alloy. Then it's desorbed from there," Ishkov said.

The company has been producing hydrogen as part of hydrocarbon processing for around forty years, in particular at the Sosnogorsk plant, he said. However, there's no demand for it in commercial form. If demand emerges, production capacity for commercial-grade hydrogen could be created by building additional purification facilities.

The Kovykta gas condensate field is the largest in eastern Russia by gas reserves. It serves as the foundation for forming the Irkutsk gas production center and acts as a resource base for the Power of Siberia pipeline to China, along with the Chayandinskoye field in Yakutia.

Discovered in 1987 in the Zhigalovsky and Kazachinsko-Lensky districts of the Irkutsk region, the field's recoverable reserves place it in the unique category - 1.8 trillion cubic meters of gas and 65.7 million tonnes of gas condensate.