Japan Extracts Natural Gas From Frozen Methane Hydrate

ixarux writes "For the first time ever, a Japanese company has successfully extracted natural gas from frozen methane hydrate off its central coast. The Nankai Trough gas field, located a little more than 30 miles offshore, could provide an alternative energy source for the island nation, reducing its dependence on foreign imports. 'A Japanese study estimated that at least 1.1tn cubic meters of methane hydrate exist in offshore deposits. This is the equivalent of more than a decade of Japan's gas consumption. Japan has few natural resources and the cost of importing fuel has increased after a backlash against nuclear power following the Fukushima nuclear disaster two years ago.'"

Comments

Article sucked

[gurps_npc]

The article says Japan "extracted" the methane. But it says nothing about how they extracted it. By extraction they could simply mean melting the ice. Which is worthless. What we need is a way to transport it from the frozen bottom of the sea to the room temperature power plants

The problem is transporting it. Transporting liquids (oil) is easy, you pump it through pipes to tanks. Transporting gas is slightly harder as you pump it in air-tight pipes to air-tight tanks.

Transporting room temperature solids is a moderately hard, you shovel it and truck it.

But frozen methane is the worst. It is solid when left alone, but turns to gas at room temperature. Worse, it is almost always at the bottom of the ocean.

If they solved this problem, great. But we don;t know they did that, because they were not very clear at all.

In my experience there is a simple explanation for that lack of information - very bad translation from a foreign language. Someone probably solved a rather minor technical issue about removing the frozen water, leaving the gas, but it probably did NOT solve the major 'do it underwater, at huge depths, at freezing cold temperatures, by robot' problem.

Instead of explaining that it was a minor technical victory, they left out all the details and claimed translation issues.

Re:Seems like a good step

[pixelpusher220]

Eh, depending on some variables maybe it isn't that bad.

1. Assuming that they'd burn coal if they didn't use the methane.
2. Assuming the energy released from burning the methane is similar to the energy released from burning coal (I don't know)

then burning something that is inherently unstable like the Methane Hydrates in the oceans is far better than burning the coal. The coal is a nice stable solid at every human habitable temperature. They Hydrates aren't. If the ocean warms too much, the hydrates will just bubble out and poof, LOTS more methane in the atmosphere that didn't provide us anything useful - and we have the CO2 released from burning the coal.

So the devil is in the details, and the best solution is burning neither methane nor coal, but if you have to pick, choose the one that isn't likely to spontaneously turn into another form thus making your situation much much worse.