THE Methane Thread (merged)

[Hydro]

That's not true.

Here in Canada, here is our breakdown of electricity.

Electricity - production by source (fossil fuel): 28% [180th of 223]

Electricity - production by source (hydro): 57.9% [46th of 223]

Electricity - production by source (nuclear): 12.9% [22nd of 223]

Electricity - production by source (other): 1.3%

Just over 1/4 of our electricity is produced using fossil fuels. That number will rapidly decline over the next two decades.

Therefore, I say again, your statement is false.

[sheilach]

Here in Canada, here is our breakdown of electricity.

I was speaking in general, not just Canada.

Of course you have a much smaller population than we do in the US and more hydropower.
In the US most of our electric generation is from fossil fuels.

In the eastern states of the US, it's mostly coal, then gas and oil with some hydro and a bit of renewable, but very little.

In California for example it breaks down to Petrolium 48mil.kw, nuclear;34.3mil.kw, hydroelectric;29mil.kw; gas8.7BIL.kw.

As natural gas declines, and it is, California will have one huge energy headache!
Arizona gets it's electric generation power from coal,38.0 BIL.kw petrolium,50.mil.kw; nuclear, 30.9bil.kw hydroelectric, 7.4 BIL.kw.

In Oregon where I live it's Hydroelectric, 34.1 bil.kw.; coal, 3.8Bil.kw.; gas,1.8bil.kw.; petroleum, 6mil.kw.; and gas, 1.8BIL.kw.

My information source was "The world almanac and book of facts, 2004" by the New York Times.

That's not true.

Check it out for yourself. :D

[Hydro]

In reference to the US, you are correct.

[Aaron]

It's worth noting Hydro, that Canada's economy is tied at the hip to the American economy.

What affects any of us these days affects the rest as well. Some countries will fare better than others of course, but any serious recession or especially depression in the US will drag Canada along for the ride.

[sheilach]

Relax,your soaking in it

Arron, I'm afraid to ask, just what am I "soaking" in?

[Aaron]

Viable energy source or pipe dream?

http://ethomas.web.wesleyan.edu/ees123/clathrate.htm

[nero]

The mining technique reminds me of SAG-D used to recover bitumen. But instead of Bitumen you get gas. Presumably the heat required to melt the clathrate is less than the heat energy of the methane released, but it doesn't sound like any sort of near term resource.

[Devil]

I fear it is a pipeline dream :D

However, it is certainly NOT going to help the urgent issue. If the clathrates are stably emprisoned in a hydrate shell, they are not contributing to the carbon cycle, therefore they are not making an additional loading of either CO2 or, worse, CH4 to the atmosphere.

If, by some miracle, they could be exploited economically, they will cause an additional loading of both. This is something we do not need. In reality, this is something we should avoid at all costs.

Ever heard of the sorcerer's apprentice?

[Whitecrab]

Although hydrate extraction is still in the "decades away" and "at least 6x current costs" realm, I thought, "hey, if we can lower costs and improve collection at a rate similar to the tar sands, maybe we can get it working. It would be a global warming nightmare, sure, but it would solve the gas problem." The two tasks seem comparable.

However, ASPO's own Jean Laherrere has debunked Methane Hydrates. To paraphrase, they are "far too spread out to ever be conceivably economical" and "only useful perhaps as an alternative storage technique to LNG for transportation."

From dieoff.org's synopsis page:

OCEANIC HYDRATES
Laherrere has provided two papers that show there is no evidence from all the worldwide research and extensive coring for any massive hydrate deposits. http://dieoff.com/page192.htm -- http://dieoff.com/page225.htm . According to Fleay:

Gas hydrates resources on the ocean floor are formed at depth where the pressure is high enough and the temperature low enough which means the hydrates are DISPERSED and not amenable to processes to concentrate them in large reservoirs as happens with natural gas and oil. For this reason the cost of extracting them would be formidable and would certainly end up being an energy SINK not a source. Jean Laherrere is well informed on this having been involved in exploring for ocean floor gas hydrates.

[rowante]

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/ ... 090904.php

Hydrocarbons in the deep Earth?


National Science Foundation, NASA Astrobiology Institute, US Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration, Carnegie/DOE Alliance CenterWashington, D.C. In an era of rising oil and gas prices, the possibility that there are untapped reserves is enticing. Since the first U.S. oil well hit pay dirt in 1859, commercially viable wells of oil and gas commonly have been drilled no deeper than 3 to 5 miles into Earth's crust. "These experiments point to the possibility of an inorganic source of hydrocarbons at great depth in the Earth--that is, hydrocarbons that come from simple reactions between water and rock and not just from the decomposition of living organisms," stated Dr. Russell Hemley of the Carnegie Institution's Geophysical Laboratory, and co-author of a study published in the September 13-17, early, on-line edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.*

Methane is the most abundant hydrocarbon in the Earth's crust and it is the main component of natural gas. Often, gas reserves are accompanied by liquid petroleum. However these reserves, at 3 to 5 miles beneath the surface, exist in relatively low-pressure conditions. Whether hydrocarbons exist deeper--and could even be formed from non-biological matter--has been the subject of much debate. As depth increases in the Earth, the pressures can become so crushing that molecules are squeezed into new forms and the temperature conditions are like an inferno making matter behave much differently. The team of scientists performed a series of experiments at Carnegie, the Carnegie-managed High Pressure Collaborative Access Team (HPCAT) at Argonne National Laboratory, and at Indiana University South Bend--together with calculations performed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory--to mimic conditions that occur in Earth's upper mantle, which underlies the crust at depths of about 12 to 37 miles (20 to 60 km) beneath the continents.

With a diamond anvil cell, the scientists squeezed materials common at Earth's surface--iron oxide (FeO), calcite (CaCO3) and water-- to pressures ranging from 50,000 to 110,000 times the pressure at sea level ( 5 to 11 gigapascals). They heated the samples using two techniques--focused laser light and the so-called resistive heating method--to temperatures up to 2,700 degrees F (1500 degrees C). The researchers found that methane formed by reducing the carbon in calcite over a wide range of temperatures and pressures. The best conditions were at temperatures and pressures of about 1000 degrees F and less than 70,000 times atmospheric pressure.

Dr. Henry Scott, of Indiana University South Bend, related the significance of the experiments to conventional hydrocarbon resources: "Although it is well-established that commercial petroleum originates from the decay of once-living organisms, these results support the possibility that the deep Earth may produce abiogenic hydrocarbons of its own."

"This paper is important," remarked Dr. Freeman Dyson, professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton who reviewed the study. "Not because it settles the question whether the origin of natural gas and petroleum is organic or inorganic, but because it gives us tools to attack the question experimentally. If the answer turns out to be inorganic, this has huge implications for the ecology and economy of our planet as well as for the chemistry of other planets."

[Whitecrab]

energybulletin.net makes a good point:

http://www.energybulletin.net/2093.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Editorial Notes ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So, does this one mean that all our energy prayers are answered?

Well not likely. Ignoring the issue of greenhouse emissions, the deepest borehole ever drilled was 12.26km deep, the Kola Superdeep Borehole (KSDB) in Kola, Russia. KSDB was itself was a remarkable engineering feat, considering the second deepest scientific borehole was barely 4km deep.

Drilling to 100km is probably well beyond our abilities, but if possible could lead to the most expensive dry hole ever drilled — so it seems unlikely it would be even attempted.

Other factors are of course involved. Traditionally recoverable oil and gas exist in pourous rock above a water aquifer which provides the necessary pressure. The mere presence of hydrocarbons in the crust is not enough to make them viable energy sources. Likewise, in the case of the mantle, at depths of 100km, the mere presence of hydrocarbons does not mean that we can extract them economically. For instance, it may be that methane only moves only very slowly through the high pressure rock at such depths, making the whole exercise pointless. -AF

[WebHubbleTelescope]

Methane is the simplest hydrocarbon, CH4. If any hydrocarbon were formed through some inorganic process, CH4 is the most likely candidate. I would like to find out if it formed only in trace amounts, etc.

There are many pathways to create anomalous compounds. The Brown's/Klein's/HHO/Santilli/MagneGas form of water is an interesting one.
http://mobjectivist.blogspot.com/2004/08/brownkleinhho.html
http://mobjectivist.blogspot.com/2004/08/free-energy-fringers.html

[MarkR]

[quote]There are many pathways to create anomalous compounds. The Brown's/Klein's/HHO/Santilli/MagneGas form of water is an interesting one. [/q]

Brown's gas is hardly an anomalous compound. It is simply a stoichiometric mixture of hydrogen and oxygen; no more, no less.

There are many tall tales of 'excess' energy and 'overunity' production - but these are easily demonstrably due to errors in measurement and failure to consider water content, temperature and pressure of gas when measuring gas production. Demonstrations of Brown's gas powered torches, are frequently touted as being amazingly capable, due to exceptionally high temperatures produced by the gas - capable of welding aluminium to magnesium and equally useless tasks. Of course, they can't weld or cut steel; just like a conventional oxy-hydrogen torch, they simply aren't hot enough.

[WebHubbleTelescope]

Brown's gas is hardly an anomalous compound. It is simply a stoichiometric mixture of hydrogen and oxygen; no more, no less.

Good point. The anomaly is in the claim of a new way to form a conventional compound, with the added claim that it is a new chemistry.

If you happened to read my links, you would see that the interesting point I was trying to make is the charlatans who overtout the anomalies. And claim new forms of matter. The HHO gas pusher, Santilli, in particular, has in the past claimed that Einstein's theories are suspect! And he has dreamed up lawsuits against those publications that slight him!

I hope the methane story doesn't get picked up by the charlatans, before we get a serious engineering analysis of its relevance.

[gg3]

The charlatans won't be able to afford the test wells.

Oh wait, they'll sell investment schemes on the idea that "someone" is doing a test-well. Sigh.

Anyway, I'm in the sceptic camp here about deep-earth methane. Doubling our drilling depth will truly require new technologies and much trial & error. Building nuclear reactors, wind farms, and the transmission lines to connect them into the grid, is a simple exercise. Electricity is not a subsittute for oil, but it will certainly extend the supply.

[rerere]

Here on peakoil is a discussion of making Methane (called the Seafuel process)

http://www.peakoil.com/fortopic743.html

Here is another way:
http://www.evworld.com/view.cfm?section ... toryid=781

The 'solar tower' part is an interesting twist.

Now....what can be made via air extraction that isn't a (bad) greenhouse gas? Or remains mostly liquid at STP? As long as 'we' are going to ask for something that is not hydrogen - what might be the best thing to ask for?

[MarkR]

But, as I understand it, you are asking for hydrogen. The Hydrogen is input to the Seafuels process.

Currently, hydrogen has to come from
a) Natural gas (it is more efficient to convert the NG direct to methanol - indeed industrial production of methanol actually produces excess hydrogen - which can be used for additional methanol production using just this method); or
b) Electrolysis (don't be deceived by the idea of making hydrogen from caustic soda and chlorine - guess what process is needed to make both these chemicals).

Methanol is a fine fuel for internal combustion engines and fuel cells, but it comes at a significant energy efficiency cost. You also need a suitable source of hydrogen...

[0mar]

energy sink not source.

simple rule of thumb. if you have to make your energy source it won't be a source by the time you are done.

[BabyPeanut]

http://www.dailyamerican.com/articles/2 ... news01.txt

The proposed project calls for WSI Mostoller Landfill to pipe its liquid waste to the prison's sewage treatment plant and in return allow SCI-Laurel Highlands to use methane gas off the tip of the landfill to run its boiler plant, DOC officials said.

CLEAN AND GREEN IN GAOL

I suppose if you have a 100% controlled environment of a prison it is ideal for this.

[Lehyina]

There is so much good news on this site tonight that I'm worried I might turn into an optimist. How about this story:
US DOE Commissions Voyage of Discovery for Vast New Resource

When this semi-submersible drilling vessel enters the Gulf of Mexico later this month it will embark researchers on a 35-day voyage of discovery that is part of an effort to map a virtually inexhaustible supply of energy - the methane hydrate that may represent up to 200,000 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

Now folks, 200,000 trillion cubic feet of methane would be around 34,500 Giga barrels oil in equivalent energy terms. This will be the flat earth society's dream come true. It means that the human population can go on growing forever because there is so much energy it is "virtually inexhaustible". Fast forward to 2050. The human population has reached 9 billion energy hungry souls but the world is a much fairer place because every single person has been able to increase his/her per capita total primary energy consumption to 63 barrels oil equivalent (boe) per person per year (same as the current average for the USA). The American dream has become a reality in every country in the entire world thanks to this "virtually inexhaustible" supply of energy. But one day someone starts checking the maths. 9 billion times 63 equals 567 Giga boe consumption per year. Whoops..... in 2050 that virtually inexhaustible supply of methane will only be good for another 60 years