There is a story over at the CBC about wanting to solve the worlds long term energy problems with ICE
Yeah, well that's the headline, but if you read more than the first paragraph you realize that that's not at all what they're saying. They're trying to get at methane (natural gas) that happens to be locked in ice, but that (duh!) isn't itelf ice.
It may be methane in a frozen state, but that is hardly the conventional meaning of the term "ice". This is a bit like saying $oil_company is trying to meet energy needs with dirt, because they're digging an oil rig that happenes to bore though dirt.
The fact is, these methane deposits seems to exist along a lot of the world's continental shelves, but we haven't yet found a way to bring them to the surface. So these people happen to be going after one of these deposits that happens to be sitting in some arctic ice. Nifty, but not news, and certainly not news in the way this was written up.
Nothin' says editorial integrity like a Slashdot writeup....
RE: That's not what it says
by
jayteedee
·
· Score: 3
But a hydrate is (in this case) methane which happens to be surrounded by water molecules so it is indeed 'ice' surrounding the methane. You might consider it contaminated ice. Plus the article that was linked actually used ice in the title, so it isn't exactly a/. problem. This of course doesn't mean that FUD shouldn't be applied to/. titles in general.:)
But to keep this on topic. If microbes are responsible for the formation of the methane, why isn't there a method to get the methane directly from the microbes work? There is plenty of organic waste available. That would seem to be the bigger story since melting the ice to get to the methane you have to pass through that nasty latent heat of fusion barrier. Or drag the ice to warmer climates.
-- Religion and science are both 90% crap..but that doesn't negate the other 10%.
Yes, the methane is trapped within ice crystals -- it is not itself in ice form. Along the sea floor it is estimated that several hundred years' worth of methane fuel is trapped in clathrates, there is a real tricky question:
How stable are the formations? If our mining practices introduce warmer water into the vicinity of the clathrates we could trigger a gas release, which would dump lots of methane into the atmosphere.
Even if we don't mine them, proponents of global warming believe that even a slight warming of the ocean depths could release large quantities of methane, which would further increase warming.
Because the Canadian clathrates are land-bound it may be possible to extract the gas they contain without causing a catastrophic release, but maybe we should just leave clathrates alone and dump some of the money we would spend on researching their exploitation on creating affordable, efficient solar-powered hydrogen-separation stations, an effective distribution system for liquid hydrogen, and engines that burn hydrogen safely and efficiently?
I realize the technologies for exploiting methane are much more evolved, but to me increasing our reliance on any carbon-based fuel seems short-sighted.
Scientists have now descovered the benifits of frozen fire. The fire is frozen into 1 foot blocks and shipped to communities worldwide, where it is melted down and used as needed.
Frozen fire saves energy.:)
They've been dealing with hydrates for decades. They know how to drill it, how to pipe it, etc. The environmental impacts could be studied from the Siberian fields. One of the more interesting issues with hydrates is their instability. They can flash over into a gas pretty easily. In water, this causes your boat/rig to sink under the water. On land, I'd imagine it could be a bit more explosive.
For the person who asked about using the microbes directly: we already do. If you live in a big city, your city already has a private company sucking up methane from those same microbes working away in our landfills.
-- The bitter lessons of a veteran coder: http://bitterprogrammer.blogspot.com
Headlines can't be as good as abstracts, y'know.
by
Spamalamadingdong
·
· Score: 2
While I agree with a lot of the sense of your complaints, I think you're being overly critical. Especially when you come down to this:
It may be methane in a frozen state, but that is hardly the conventional meaning of the term "ice".
When cometary scientists talk about "ice", they mean not only frozen water but also frozen methane, ammonia, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, hydrogen cyanide... In some contexts "ice" is a term of art which has a somewhat different meaning from the common usage. --
Having 50 karma is an itchy feeling; I know I'll get
If microbes are responsible for the formation of the methane, why isn't there a method to get the methane directly from the microbes work? There is plenty of organic waste available.
There are several such methods. HOWEVER:
Digesting organic waste (such as municipal garbage or crop stalks) only yields a relatively small amount of fuel.
The amount of carbon currently inventoried in arctic permafrost and continental shelf sediments is thousands (millions?) of times as much as the annual turnover on farms.
We wouldn't want to harvest the biomass of the arctic to digest it directly, because we'd disturb the ecosystem rather badly. Grabbing some methane that's only going to escape into the atmosphere anyway is much less of a disturbance.
Methane is a greenhouse gas some 200 times as powerful as carbon dioxide, so harvesting and burning this methane for fuel may be better for the environment than letting it escape freely.
We may have no choice about this, because warming already on the way is likely to free up a lot of methane currently trapped in hydrates; we can either let it give the warming trend an enormous push, or use this methane ourselves (and perhaps replace lots of coal and oil with it).
That's just a few things off the top of my head.
... melting the ice to get to the methane you have to pass through that nasty latent heat of fusion barrier. Or drag the ice to warmer climates.
Or just use warm surface water (continental-shelf hydrates) or heat pipes from the surface during the summer (arctic hydrates) to do it essentially for free. --
Having 50 karma is an itchy feeling; I know I'll get
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, well that's the headline, but if you read more than the first paragraph you realize that that's not at all what they're saying. They're trying to get at methane (natural gas) that happens to be locked in ice, but that (duh!) isn't itelf ice.
It may be methane in a frozen state, but that is hardly the conventional meaning of the term "ice". This is a bit like saying $oil_company is trying to meet energy needs with dirt, because they're digging an oil rig that happenes to bore though dirt.
The fact is, these methane deposits seems to exist along a lot of the world's continental shelves, but we haven't yet found a way to bring them to the surface. So these people happen to be going after one of these deposits that happens to be sitting in some arctic ice. Nifty, but not news, and certainly not news in the way this was written up.
Nothin' says editorial integrity like a Slashdot writeup....
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
Yes, the methane is trapped within ice crystals -- it is not itself in ice form. Along the sea floor it is estimated that several hundred years' worth of methane fuel is trapped in clathrates, there is a real tricky question:
How stable are the formations? If our mining practices introduce warmer water into the vicinity of the clathrates we could trigger a gas release, which would dump lots of methane into the atmosphere.
Even if we don't mine them, proponents of global warming believe that even a slight warming of the ocean depths could release large quantities of methane, which would further increase warming.
Because the Canadian clathrates are land-bound it may be possible to extract the gas they contain without causing a catastrophic release, but maybe we should just leave clathrates alone and dump some of the money we would spend on researching their exploitation on creating affordable, efficient solar-powered hydrogen-separation stations, an effective distribution system for liquid hydrogen, and engines that burn hydrogen safely and efficiently?
I realize the technologies for exploiting methane are much more evolved, but to me increasing our reliance on any carbon-based fuel seems short-sighted.
Get off my virtual lawn, you damned virtual kids!
Scientists have now descovered the benifits of frozen fire. The fire is frozen into 1 foot blocks and shipped to communities worldwide, where it is melted down and used as needed. Frozen fire saves energy. :)
They've been dealing with hydrates for decades. They know how to drill it, how to pipe it, etc. The environmental impacts could be studied from the Siberian fields. One of the more interesting issues with hydrates is their instability. They can flash over into a gas pretty easily. In water, this causes your boat/rig to sink under the water. On land, I'd imagine it could be a bit more explosive.
For the person who asked about using the microbes directly: we already do. If you live in a big city, your city already has a private company sucking up methane from those same microbes working away in our landfills.
The bitter lessons of a veteran coder: http://bitterprogrammer.blogspot.com
--
Having 50 karma is an itchy feeling; I know I'll get
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
- Digesting organic waste (such as municipal garbage or crop stalks) only yields a relatively small amount of fuel.
- The amount of carbon currently inventoried in arctic permafrost and continental shelf sediments is thousands (millions?) of times as much as the annual turnover on farms.
- We wouldn't want to harvest the biomass of the arctic to digest it directly, because we'd disturb the ecosystem rather badly. Grabbing some methane that's only going to escape into the atmosphere anyway is much less of a disturbance.
- Methane is a greenhouse gas some 200 times as powerful as carbon dioxide, so harvesting and burning this methane for fuel may be better for the environment than letting it escape freely.
- We may have no choice about this, because warming already on the way is likely to free up a lot of methane currently trapped in hydrates; we can either let it give the warming trend an enormous push, or use this methane ourselves (and perhaps replace lots of coal and oil with it).
That's just a few things off the top of my head. Or just use warm surface water (continental-shelf hydrates) or heat pipes from the surface during the summer (arctic hydrates) to do it essentially for free.--
Having 50 karma is an itchy feeling; I know I'll get
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist