Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion General Science Discussion Forum Clathrates...

Discussing the reputedly vast stores of methane still to be exploited;

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Methane hydride - A frozen lattice-like substance, huge amounts of which underlie our oceans and polar permafrost. This crystalline combination of a natural gas and water (known technically as a clathrate) looks remarkably like ice but burns when exposed to a lit match. Methane hydrate discovered only a few decades ago, with little research done on it until recently. By some estimates, the energy locked up in methane hydrate deposits is more than twice the global reserves of all conventional gas, oil, and coal deposits combined. However, no one has yet figured out how to pull out the gas inexpensively, and no one knows how much is actually recoverable.
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"Twice the global reserves of all conventional gas, oil, and coal deposits combined"... Yow! That's, er, rather a lot... funny we don't hear more about it, if you can just light it with a match.

Internet searching turns up remarkably little information on such a potentially important subject. Does anyone know more?

Methane hydride does not exist.

The compound is methane HYDRATE.

(physical reality) -(empirical reality) = religion. Religion doesn't power electric sockets.

Methane hydrate phase diagrams,

http://www.netl.doe.gov/technologies/oil...s_phasebase.gif
http://www.netl.doe.gov/technologies/oil...ns_phasearc.gif
http://www.netl.doe.gov/technologies/oil..._phaseocean.gif

1) There is no reasonable way to get to it at those ocean or permafrost depths.

2) The "immense deposts" are dilutely dispersed through hundreds of thousands of cubic miles of continental shelf and deeper ocean sediments.

3) It falls apart on the way to the surface.

4) If you destabilized a suitably large deposit worth mining you could trigger an uncontrollable massive (cubic miles, STP) methane release. Sediment is only a mud pile.

4a) Methane is a powerful Greenhouse Effect gas.
4b) Methane is flammable.
4c) Sea foam is much less dense than water. Everything formery floating in the froth would head right for the bottom - that's your mining ships and you.

As with all things Enviro-whiner, it is a nice Liberal demo and crap when performed at scale. Nature is non-linear. Don't take Uncle Al's word for it - do a methane hydrate Day of Doom experiment yourself: One unopened 2-liter bottle of fizzy soft drink at room temp. One Mentos candy.

Securely place the 2-liter bottle of fizzy pop on lawn, top up. Carefully unscrew the top and remove. Is everything OK? Good! Now drop in one Mentos candy to furnish heterogeneous nucleation sites. That is what a methane hydrate mining screwup will do, BIG TIME.

http://www.funnycoolstuff.com/2006/06/12/diet-coke-and-mentos-experiments/

God, save us from do-gooders and inflict us with scientists.

Yow! They bite! Yes, Methane Hydrate - all quotes include the original errors...

I was not suggesting we actually go and get this stuff out from where it is. Throwing stored Carbon up in the air seems to be causing plenty of trouble as it is...

Interesting phase diagrams - this is the sort of thing I'm looking for, not to be treated as a do-gooder by a band of Coke-drinkers...

Actually there is little problem getting it. The question is whether it can be obtained in a commercially viable manner.

At the rate methane prices are rising on this planet that may be more a matter of time rather than technology.

Had a look on "Uncle Al's" homepage, as linked in his sig. What a very bitter and unhappy man he must be... Glad I'm not you, mate.

There is more hydrocarbon trapped in Colorado oil shale than is buried under all of Arabia. Oil shale is in fact a calcareous marlstone - fossilized lake varves - stronger than industrial concrete. The dispersed solid organics constitute low rank coal (10-20 wt-%, rarely 30% organics). It's sitting there, boy, no more than 100 feet under the surface and 1000 feet or more thick contiguously over thousands of square miles.

It's all but worthless. The organics cannot be recovered without utterly destroying the real estate. Recovered liquid pyrolyzate is loaded with nitrogen (up tp 3 wt-%), arsenic (10-20 ppm), and chemical unsaturation. It is the perfect refinery poison.

Cutting slabs at a shallow angle and polishing makes beautiful coffee tables.

Montana is covered with thousands of square miles of thick bituminous coal deposits buried no more deeply. Why don't we grab the abundant, good, cheap, and easy? You give that some real hard thinking... and when you get to "Enviro-whiner" you may stop.

Uncle Al is in turn glad you are not Uncle Al.