Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
water forms a kind of ice that traps the methane. At
depths of a thousand feet (
meters) in the Arctic
permafrost and at depths greater than about
feet
(
meters) in the oceans the conditions are right for
the formation of this peculiar substance. The IEA esti-
mate of recoverable gas from this source range from
to
TCM, but the resource may be much
larger.
There is no commercial-scale gas production from the
hydrates. Japan is probably the world leader in research
and development (R&D) aimed at learning how to
recover gas in this form. If it can be done, reserves will
greatly expand. The US had a long-term R&D program
on hydrates that was terminated in
in favor of short-
term, production-oriented R&D, a mistake that is typical
of many on-again/off-again energy programs run by the
United States. Methane hydrate recovery has to be done
carefully because methane is a much stronger greenhouse
gas than CO
and if the recovery process leads to signifi-
-
cant releases of methane to the atmosphere, we will be in
a lot more climate change trouble than we are now. How
expensive it will be to tap this resource in an environ-
mentally sustainable way is still unknown.
The required amount of gas to last the century can be
estimated as it was for oil. Demand is growing by
.
%
per year and consumption today is
.
TCM per year.
The amount required up to the year
will be about
TCM. Unless
reserves are much larger
than
Methane hydrate is one of a more general class of mixtures called
clathrates. Even CO
can form a clathrate and this is the basis of the idea
that perhaps CO
can be sequestered as a clathrate in the deep oceans.
