OilPrice.com | Energy Breakthrough? China Has Successfully Mined ‘Fire Ice’ From The Sea
China has successfully extracted gas from gas hydrates—also known as ‘fire ice’ or ‘flammable ice’—in the northern part of the South China Sea, the China Geographical Survey said on Thursday.
Gas hydrate, methane hydrate in particular, is a cage-like structure of crystallized ice, inside of which are trapped molecules of methane, the chief constituent of natural gas. If methane hydrate is either warmed or depressurized, it reverts back to water and natural gas.
According to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), global estimates vary, but the energy content of methane in hydrates is “immense, possibly exceeding the combined energy content of all other known fossil fuels”. But no methane production other than small-scale field experiments has been documented so far.
Today, the China Geographical Survey said that it managed to collect samples from the Shenhu area in the South China Sea in a test that started last Wednesday. Every day some 16,000 cubic meters (565,000 cubic feet) of gas, almost all of which was methane, were extracted from the test field.
I'll believe the extraction story when I see some EROEI data for this exercise.
ReplyDeleteAgreed. Even if it does work out, ain't much else ready to use itwith the current infrastructure.
DeleteThere's actually a little bit more there than you might guess.
ReplyDeletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquefied_natural_gas
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_gas_vehicle
I'm next to the KCATA bus barn during office hours, and have had occasion to ride around in their LNG buses a few times.