Hydroma Inc. is a Canadian company who has successfully discovered large natural hydrogen accumulations in Bourakébougou area Mali. The discovery is associated with extensive research, drilling campaigns, sysmic exploration and a lot of other activities which contributes to mapping the precense of hydrogen in the area of Bourakébougou.

The story goes back to 1987 when gas exited from a well that was drilled for water. When the drillers got back to see the phenomena, they unintendedly set fire to the well when lighting up a cigarette near it.

More information can be found on: Hydroma

In the end of 2022, H2Consultancy contacted GOcontroll for an interesting project in Africa. Making a fuel cell system in Mali which is capable of running on Natural Hydrogen coming directly from a well. Main goal is to learn from the first findings and to do research for the potential of natural hydrogen.

Some components from the fuel cell system were already on site. Additional materials were chosen and brought to Africa during the first test week in Januari 2023.

Activities phase I:

• Fuel cell architecture designed by H2Consultancy
• Purchase of additional components for the fuel cell setup
• Prepared and tested hardware on bench setup in Ulft (Holland).
• Hardware installation and commissioning of fuel cell system on site in Bourakébougou.

More information about H2Consultancy can be found here

Phase II emerged from the findings done in the first test week. GOcontroll carried out a benchmark test in Holland to see the performance of the complete setup on industrial grade hydrogen (Class 5). Some changes are done on the setup and the fuel cell controller was replaced by the GOcontroll Moduline Mini I to have full control over the control strategy to improve the performance of the system on natural hydrogen.

Activities in preparation of phase II:

• Adaptations on fuel cell system architecture (Layout)
• Programmed fuel cell control on GOcontroll Moduline Mini I
• Carried out benchmark runs in Holland for comparison of performance on natural hydrogen

The second week of may 2023, GOcontroll installed and commissioned the customized fuel cell system in Bourakébougou. After some finetuning of the controls, the system ran stable on natural hydrogen that came directly from the well. This week marked the start of an endurance test over a few months, energizing the village of Bourakébougou by a fuel cell running directly on natural hydrogen.

Activities phase II:

• Installation and commissioning  on site
• Control improvements during test runs
• Remote monitoring performance of the system over several months

The fuel cell is running for several months now. Data is collected and reviewed to improve the performance and durability in the feature. One thing is clear that natural hydrogen has already shown its potential. On to the next phase!

More in dept information about the discovery of hydrogen can be found in an article of Nature.