63 comments on Update on US GOM: Methane Hydrates
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63 comments on Update on US GOM: Methane Hydrates
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GAIA Host Collective
Somewhere I have read that crater like depressions varying in size up to maybe a kilometer across have been found on the sea floor that may be the result of hydrate deposits breaking loose and floating away perhaps as a result of a nearby earthquake,etc.
Is this "for real"?
And for the engineers:If all this new gas we hear about,both onshore and off,is really producible at a reasonable cost:
About how much ,percentage wise of a given quantity of gas,is needed to convert the remainder into liquid fuel or propane,which is a practical fuel for heavy trucks and farm tractors,etc?
And in present day dollars,very roughly how much would such fuel or propane cost,above and beyond the cost of the gas used to manufacture it?
Hydrate deposits are notoriously unstable. Especially on the continental shelf-edge slopes down towards the deep ocean, 'land slips'
can occur, releasing large amounts of hydrate which floats to the surface, 'melts' and forms a huge methane burp. These have been
observed and are thought to be one possible cause for unexplained ship disappearances in the Bermuda triangle and elsewhere. The
methane bubbles reduce the effective density of the water and the ship sinks like a stone, completely without warning.
Bermuda Trianglization of Society. Maybe we can disappear as species and not leave a trace. Now there is a black swan.
We will leave plenty of traces: a mass extinction episode, toxic & radioactive waste dumps, a depleted stratospheric ozone stratum, an atmosphere replete with oxidized carbon & other high heat capacity gasses, and an acidified ocean, to name but a few of the major "traces" we will leave behind.
we may have been reading from some of the same sources.is there any solid evidence that you know of to support the lost ships scenario?
Re: conversion to liquid fuels, it depends a lot on what the composition of the gas is. It's easier to do when there is a high fraction of ethane, propane, etc.
My students did a design exercise this year trying to work out the number for the OXCO (oxidative coupling process) outlined by Edwards et. al. (Edwards, J.H., Do, K.T. and Tyler, R.J., FUEL 71(3), 1992, pp325-334).
Using a natural gas that was about 90% methane and only a couple of percent heavier hydrocarbons, with some semi-wild guesses about energy consumption in different parts of the plant, they got overall conversion efficiencies of about a third to a half. ie, about half to two thirds of the gas was discarded as oxidised process waste or required to fuel a gas turbine to provide electricity for the plant.
Xuewen,
Thanks,I've posted this question before.Yours is the first response.
The unconventional domestic gas appears to be there,and it appears that it can be had at a fairly reasonable price,according to others who comment here regularly.
Maybe the clathrates will work out too.
Now if somebody who knows about these rhings will supply a rough estimate of the cost and capacity of a conversion plant,I could make an informed guess at the price of liquid motor fuel a few years down the road.