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Methane Hydrate Fuel (merged)

Discussions of conventional and alternative energy production technologies.

Re: THE Methane Hydrate Recovery Thread

Unread postby ennui2 » Tue 26 Jan 2016, 13:58:51

pstarr wrote:Make me eat them now. I can't wait ennui.


No, because the future hasn't happened yet. Please do whatever it takes to rewire you brain to realize this otherwise there's no sense having this discussion.
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Re: THE Methane Hydrate Recovery Thread

Unread postby ennui2 » Tue 26 Jan 2016, 16:38:51

pstarr wrote:Ocean waters are both warmer and less dense as we rise in the water column.


Methane from hydrates is already seeping up from the ocean floor. If the gas rises, it can be captured.
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Re: THE Methane Hydrate Recovery Thread

Unread postby ennui2 » Tue 26 Jan 2016, 16:51:08

pstarr wrote:Do you propose a big inverted jello mold over the entire ocean"


It's not my responsibility to make a proposal because I'm not a FF engineer. I also don't think it's necessary to capture every atom of methane from hydrates. It's only necessary to capture enough of it to get a positive ROI, either by catching some of it that is naturally seeping, or plucking some of it from the seabed, or some combination of the two. When you look at some of the extreme techniques currently used to extract FF, like mountaintop removal or mining tar-sands with huge trucks, I don't see how outlandish it is for companies to attempt methane hydrates. Fast-forward into a resource starved world and you can be darned sure a lot more effort will be spent on it than currently.
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Re: THE Methane Hydrate Recovery Thread

Unread postby ennui2 » Tue 26 Jan 2016, 17:20:27

This thread is meant to be an aggregator for news related to methane hydrate mining. It's not meant for you to put the entire enterprise to some immediate final judgment. So you can mock and ridicule all you want but it's all off-topic. Let the thread BREATHE and let history take its course and if you're right, it will emerge out of the news-stream.

Now, if you can't concede to that, and you'll continue to do your little stand-up comedy routine to try to mock me, then I will flag the sh*t out of you for spamming the forum with worthless ad homs and I would hope Pops finally intervenes, because I did not set this thread aside just to be a ring-cage match between you and me and I think by now the few posters this site has is f*cking tired of the hot-air.
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Re: THE Methane Hydrate Recovery Thread

Unread postby PrestonSturges » Tue 26 Jan 2016, 19:49:23

GHung wrote:As long as the Japanese expect to power stuff like this, they're screwed.

Image

Naw, they're going with the zombies

Image
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Re: THE Methane Hydrate Recovery Thread

Unread postby Tanada » Fri 19 May 2017, 12:12:59

A couple nice pictures at link below quote. I think this is of interest to China for the simple reason that they don't have much natural gas available within their geographical limits even counting the possibility of tight shale resources. As a result the Chinese import a fair amount of LNG for which they pay premium prices which makes expensive Methane Hydrate possibly price competitive. If Russia ever finishes those pipeline connections across Siberia the EU is going to be at serious risk of losing their biggest supplier. Anyone know what happened to the proposal for a pipeline from Iran to China crossing Afghanistan/Tibet? That would also give China a nice easy chunk of world supply a lot cheaper than mining methane hydrates.

China has for the first time extracted gas from an ice-like substance under the South China Sea considered key to future global energy supply.

Chinese authorities have described the success as a major breakthrough.

Methane hydrates, also called "flammable ice", hold vast reserves of natural gas.

Many countries including the US and Japan are working on how to tap those reserves, but mining and extracting are extremely difficult.
What is 'flammable ice'?

The catchy phrase describes a frozen mixture of water and gas.

"It looks like ice crystals but if you zoom in to a molecular level, you see that the methane molecules are caged in by the water molecules," Associate Professor Praveen Linga from the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the National University of Singapore told the BBC.

Officially known as methane clathrates or hydrates, they are formed at very low temperatures and under high pressure. They can be found in sediments under the ocean floor as well as underneath permafrost on land.

Despite the low temperature, these hydrates are flammable. If you hold a lighter to them, the gas encapsulated in the ice will catch fire. Hence, they are also known as "fire ice" or "flammable ice".

By lowering the pressure or raising the temperature, the hydrates break down into water and methane - a lot of methane. One cubic metre of the compound releases about 160 cubic metres of gas, making it a highly energy-intensive fuel.

The crux, though, is that extracting the gas is extremely difficult and energy consuming.

Methane hydrates were discovered in Russia's north in the 1960s, but research into how to extract gas from them from maritime sediment only began in the last 10 to 15 years.

As a country lacking any natural energy resources, Japan has been a pioneer in the field. Other leading countries are India or South Korea - who also don't have their own oil reserves.

While the US and Canada are also active in the field, they have been focussing on hydrates under permafrost in the far north of Alaska and Canada.
Why is it important?

Methane hydrates are thought to have the potential to be a revolutionary energy source that could be key to future energy needs - likely the world's last great source of carbon-based fuel.

Vast deposits exist basically underneath all oceans around the the globe, especially on the edge of continental shelves. Countries are scrambling for a way to make the extraction safe and profitable.

China describes its latest results as a breakthrough and Mr Linga agrees. "Compared with the results we have seen from Japanese research, the Chinese scientists have managed to extract much more gas in their efforts."

"So in that sense it is indeed a major step towards making gas extraction from methane hydrates viable."

It's thought that there is as much as 10 times the amount of gas in methane hydrates than in shale for instance. "And that's by conservative estimates," says Prof Linga.

China discovered flammable ice in the South China Sea in 2007.

Nestled between between China, Vietnam and the Philippines, the South China Sea has in recent years been an increasingly contentious issue, with Beijing claiming sole sovereignty over it - and hence rights to all natural reserves hidden under its surface.
What next?

While indeed a breakthrough, China's success is still only one step on a long journey, Prof Linga explains.

"It is the first time that production rates actually seem promising," he says. "But it's thought that only by 2025 at the earliest we might be able to look at realistic commercial options."

An average of 16,000 cubic meters of gas with high purity have been extracted per day in the Shenhu area of the South China Sea, according to Chinese media.

But Mr Linga also cautions that any exploitation of the reserves must be done with the utmost care because of environmental concerns.

The potential threat is that methane can escape, which would have serious consequences for global warming. It is a gas that has a much higher potential to impact climate change than carbon dioxide.

So the trick is to extract the gas without any of it slipping out.


http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-39971667
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Re: THE Methane Hydrate Recovery Thread

Unread postby ROCKMAN » Fri 19 May 2017, 12:35:09

T - "...which makes expensive Methane Hydrate possibly price competitive." Even the folks experimenting with MH extraction don't even offer a fantasy based possibility of commercial production let alone the economics. So why do you think the possibility that MH production has any possibility of being price competitive with LNG? Until someone develops a pilot project (even if it's rediculously expensive) there's doesn't seem to be much point in discussing the MH...IMHO.

At the moment it seems that China best hope for the future rest with wind and solar. Which is why it's probably spend hundreds of times more there then on MH research.
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Re: THE Methane Hydrate Recovery Thread

Unread postby vtsnowedin » Sat 20 May 2017, 11:01:57

ROCKMAN wrote:T - "...which makes expensive Methane Hydrate possibly price competitive." Even the folks experimenting with MH extraction don't even offer a fantasy based possibility of commercial production let alone the economics. So why do you think the possibility that MH production has any possibility of being price competitive with LNG? Until someone develops a pilot project (even if it's rediculously expensive) there's doesn't seem to be much point in discussing the MH...IMHO.

At the moment it seems that China best hope for the future rest with wind and solar. Which is why it's probably spend hundreds of times more there then on MH research.

Don't be so harsh Rock! :)
16,000 cubic meters a day sounds like a pretty serious pilot project to me. It will be interesting to see what their per unit cost is at the surface.
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Re: THE Methane Hydrate Recovery Thread

Unread postby ROCKMAN » Sat 20 May 2017, 14:48:26

vt - I take it you didn't actually read the article. They aren't producing any NG let alone 16,000 meters per day. They tested at a RATE OF 16,000 mpd but did not specify how long they tested. Might have only been a hour or two. They are guessing at least 8 more years before they actually have a producible well:

"It is the first time that production rates actually seem promising," he says. "But it's thought that only by 2025 at the earliest we might be able to look at realistic commercial options." An average of 16,000 cubic meters of gas with high purity have been extracted per day in the Shenhu area of the South China Sea, according to Chinese media."

And no hint at what such a hypothetical well would cost not the $billions to lay the pipelines out there to transport it to the bank. As I said: no indication at all that the process could come close the competing with LNG even if it increased to its record high that was about 3X the current price.

IOW we're still years away from reaching the fantasy level of expectations. LOL.
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Re: THE Methane Hydrate Recovery Thread

Unread postby vtsnowedin » Sat 20 May 2017, 18:51:57

ROCKMAN wrote:vt - I take it you didn't actually read the article. They aren't producing any NG let alone 16,000 meters per day. They tested at a RATE OF 16,000 mpd but did not specify how long they tested. Might have only been a hour or two. They are guessing at least 8 more years before they actually have a producible well:

"It is the first time that production rates actually seem promising," he says. "But it's thought that only by 2025 at the earliest we might be able to look at realistic commercial options." An average of 16,000 cubic meters of gas with high purity have been extracted per day in the Shenhu area of the South China Sea, according to Chinese media."

And no hint at what such a hypothetical well would cost not the $billions to lay the pipelines out there to transport it to the bank. As I said: no indication at all that the process could come close the competing with LNG even if it increased to its record high that was about 3X the current price.

IOW we're still years away from reaching the fantasy level of expectations. LOL.

No Rock the article I read was very specific and said they extracted 16,000 cm per day for several days not just a short test rate. Of course that might be an error in reporting or deliberate government propaganda.
Also the Chinese among others, RD Shell for one, are working on liquidizing NG into LNG at sea so they would not be building pipelines out to the field. Apparently some of these floating processing projects have been cut or put on hold by the increased production of fracked gas in the US so it would not take too much of a change in supply or demand to make them viable again.
I wonder about the process they are using to separate the water from the gas. Bringing it up to the surface and letting it depressurize and warm up works of course but I wonder if they could get it to LNG cheaper by taking advantage of the 1775 psi bottom pressure the 4000 ft depth of ocean has at that depth.
And 2025 is not that far away so a development plan that brings it online in 2025 might well line up with world supply and demand realities then.
The Chinese must think it has possibilities or they wouldn't have invested as much money as they have.
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Re: THE Methane Hydrate Recovery Thread

Unread postby ROCKMAN » Sat 20 May 2017, 22:53:53

vt - Thanks. All I read was It's link. Here are much more details:

http://www.mining.com/china-successfull ... south-sea/

But still no tech info or cost estimate. And I still have a big question of how cavitating a large hole hole at that depth will be stable. Unlike pulling NG out of the pores in the rock is very different the mining a solid.
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Re: Methane Hydrate Fuel (merged)

Unread postby Tanada » Fri 13 Oct 2017, 10:08:09

Chinese scientists have, for the first time, discovered exposed combustible ice on the seabed of the South China Sea, and the discovery was published in the international academic journal Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems on Friday.

The Chinese expedition team using a Raman spectroscopy probe detected the combustible ice - a type of natural gas hydrate - at a depth of 1,100 meters off the South China Sea, the China Central Television (CCTV) reported Friday.

Data collected from the Raman probe designed by Chinese scientists showed that the exposed combustible ice contains large amounts of methane and hydrogen sulfide. It could serve as an energy source for deep sea life, the CCTV report said.

Combustible ice is usually found in seabed or tundra areas which have the high pressure and low temperatures needed for the ice to form and continue to exist. It can be ignited like solid ethanol, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

One cubic meter of combustible ice is equal to 164 cubic meters of regular natural gas, Xinhua said.

Combustible ice exposed on the surface of the seabed needs large quantities of deep-marine cold seep fluids as air supply, thus making it difficult to preserve. The detection provided a natural experimental field to study its formation, decomposition and interaction with the marine environment, the CCTV report said.

"The extraction of exposed combustible ice is less difficult and costs less than if found in seabed or tundra areas," Yang Fuqiang, senior advisor on climate and energy at the US-based Natural Resources Defense Council, told the Global Times on Friday.

"But unlike the usual combustible ice which has crust to protect the methane it contains, extraction of such poses a high risk of methane leakage," Yang warned.

China first announced it had successfully collected samples of combustible ice in the South China Sea on May 18 after discovering the substance in the region in 2007.

After extracting during a 60-day period, China broke a world record for the total amount extracted at more than 300,000 cubic meters and the length of time it took, the People's Daily reported in July.

Yang said that methane, once leaked, could become a hazard in the South China Sea and exacerbate global warming.

Chinese scientists have to develop new technology to extract the exposed combustible ice, he noted.

Chinese scientists have made significant achievements in both technological and engineering terms in extracting combustible ice in 2017, including reliable sand contamination prevention, environmental protection, safe and sustainable production, and adjusting gas production capacity, domestic news site chinanews.com reported.


http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1067757.shtml
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Re: The Methane Thread pt. 2

Unread postby dohboi » Sat 02 Jun 2018, 11:04:40

China claims breakthrough in mining 'flammable ice',

i.e. methane hydrates.

(http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-39971667).

The article refers to the South China Sea - but China - partnership already with Russia on LNG - shallow East Siberian Arctic Shelf with loads of gas hydrates?

and:-
https://arctic.ru/analitic/20151126/241782.html

What could possibly go wrong?? 8) :lol: :cry: :twisted:

(Thanks to ger at asif for this)
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