Energy Department Seeks Methane Hydrate Proposals

The U.S. Department of Energy is soliciting for another round of research into methane hydrates, the potentially huge energy source of “frozen gas” that could step in for shortages of other fossil fuels.

The department is looking for research projects on the North Slope of Alaska that could explore how to economically extract the gas locked in ice far below the Earth’s surface.

DOE is also seeking researchers to document methane hydrate deposits in outer continental shelf waters of coastal states.

The DOE anticipates federal funding of $20 million over two years that could be leveraged into research costing $80 million, according to its “funding opportunity announcement.”

A spokeswoman for the DOE’s National Energy Technology Laboratory, Shelley Martin, said the department could not comment on funding opportunities while they are open.

Methane is the main ingredient of natural gas. It comes from buried organic matter after it’s ingested by bacteria or heated and cooked. The gas migrates upward, under high pressure and low temperature, and can combine with water to form methane hydrate.

The DOE describes methane hydrate as a lattice of ice that traps the molecules but does not bind them chemically. Methane is released when the combination of ice and gas is warmed or depressurized.

Deposits can be found under permafrost in Alaska. For extraction research, such landlocked reservoirs provide a stable platform. Larger methane hydrate deposits can be found in sediment below the sea floor.

A Minerals Management Service study in 2008 estimated methane hydrate resources in the northern Gulf of Mexico at 21,000 trillion cubic feet (595 trillion cubic meters), or 100 times current U.S. reserves of natural gas. The combined energy content of methane hydrate may exceed all other known fossil fuels, according to the DOE.

The department calls methane a clean-burning fuel and an important bridge to a time when non-carbon sources will supply more of the nation’s energy supply. Since no one has figured out the extraction puzzle, it’s uncertain exactly how it could be used.

Critics say burning methane will exacerbate the world’s greenhouse gas problem and contribute to global warming. Unburned methane released into the atmosphere is 20 times more effective at trapping heat in the atmosphere than CO2 but not as long-lived.

DOE has funded previous methane hydrate research.

The department and industry partners Houston-based ConocoPhillips and Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corp. drilled into a methane hydrate deposit over two Alaska winters ending in spring 2012 in a nearly $29 million extraction experiment.

The research was an application of laboratory studies done by ConocoPhillips and the University of Bergen in Norway indicating that carbon dioxide molecules injected into methane hydrate could swap places with methane molecules, freeing methane to be harvested. The goal was extraction without compromising the integrity of the below-ground ice.

The experiment in 30 days of production captured nearly 1 million cubic feet (30,000 cubic meters) of methane. Researchers concluded that a sizeable portion of the injected gas interacted with the methane hydrate.

The objective of the new DOE solicitation is to stimulate research that industry is not likely to pursue on its own accord in the next two to three years.

In Alaska, the department wants field studies to evaluate extended response of methane accumulations to destabilization by lowering the pressure or other approaches.

The “marine hydrate characterization” solicitation is looking for field programs that will collect data and samples such as drilling cores.

Applications are due May 22.

RIGZONE

16 Comments on "Energy Department Seeks Methane Hydrate Proposals"

Makati1 on Mon, 14th Apr 2014 11:13 pm 



We are a most insane animal. We allow psychopaths to run our lives and greed to destroy our world.

Davey on Mon, 14th Apr 2014 11:37 pm 



They must not be very excited if all they can cough up is 20MIL????

bobinget on Mon, 14th Apr 2014 11:38 pm 



It’s my understanding the unburned hydrate of methane is twenty times more powerful a greenhouse gas than CO/2. True or not? (shorter half-life)

As Arctic Permafrost is already melting at an alarming rate anyway, it would be a cute trick to be able forestall feedback giving humans more time to build even better weapons, perfect mass extermination.

Melting permafrost switches to nasty, high-gear methane release

High performance access to file storage

A team of researchers has discovered new evidence that as the permafrost layer that covers 24 per cent of the Northern Hemisphere continues to thaw as global temperatures increase, not only does it release more greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, but as time goes by the ratio of carbon dioxide (CO2) to methane (CH4) changes from 10:1 to 1:1 as more and more methane is released.

Methane is a far more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, “33 times more effective at warming the Earth on a mass basis and a century time scale relative to carbon dioxide,” according to a press release announcing the results of the study.

“We’ve known for a while now that permafrost is thawing,” said Suzanne Hodgkins of Florida State University in the release. “But what we’ve found is that the associated changes in plant community composition in the polar regions could lead to way more carbon being released into the atmosphere as methane.”

Hodgkins is the lead author of a eight-member team that conducted the research resulting in a paper, “Changes in peat chemistry associated with permafrost thaw increase greenhouse gas production”, published in the latest edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The paper explains that the proportions of CO2 and CH4 released into the atmosphere from melting permafrost depend upon a number of factors, and the one that was least understood was the changes in the chemistry of organic matter as the thaw progresses. That’s what the team sought to get a handle on.

To do so, they examined a series of recently to fully thawed sites in Stordalen Mire, a thawing peat plateau in northern Sweden that has been a site for carbon-cycle research since the 1970s.

In a nutshell, when frozen peat thaws it collapses and inundates areas of permafrost below it. Organic matter in the water is degraded by anaerobic bacteria to produce carbon dioxide and methane. At first, that degradation produces far more CO2 than CH4, but over time CH4 catches up as the chemical processes and vegetation distributions change.

Or, as the paper’s Abstract explains in more boffinary terms:

Thaw-induced subsidence and the resulting inundation … led to succession in vegetation types accompanied by an evolution in organic matter chemistry. Peat C/N ratios decreased whereas humification rates increased, and [dissolved organic matter] shifted toward lower molecular weight compounds with lower aromaticity, lower organic oxygen content, and more abundant microbially produced compounds. Corresponding changes in decomposition along this gradient included increasing CH4 and CO2 production potentials, higher relative CH4/CO2 ratios, and a shift in CH4 production pathway from CO2 reduction to acetate cleavage. These results imply that subsidence and thermokarst-associated increases in organic matter lability cause shifts in biogeochemical processes toward faster decomposition with an increasing proportion of carbon released as CH4.
According to the paper’s conclusions, this process could intensify the already-predicted climate-feedback cycle of increasing temperature, which melts more permafrost, which releases more CH4 and CO2, which increases the greenhouse effect, which raises temperatures further, which melts more permafrost, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

As one of the paper’s authors, professor Jeff Chanton of Florida State University, said in the press release, “The world is getting warmer, and the additional release of gas would only add to our problems.”

Although average surface and atmospheric temperatures have stabilized in recent years after peaking in 1998 – a year that was affected by the record-setting El Niño of 1997-98 – they are still at a level above that of previous decades: the global average from 2000 through 2009 was higher than the average for 1990 through 1999, which was warmer than 1980 through 1989. The average for 2010 through 2012, by the way, was warmer than the average temperatures of 2000 through 2009.

After the next muscular El Niño, it will be interesting for the international team of researchers to travel back to the Stordalen Mire to check on the mushiness of the methane-releasing not-so-permafrost. ®

GregT on Mon, 14th Apr 2014 11:42 pm 



Yet another foreseen positive feedback mechanism, with the ability to trigger a runaway greenhouse event. One of only a couple that we have the ability to stop.

Greedy and insane, at the same time.

Davey on Mon, 14th Apr 2014 11:47 pm 



Great news Bob, the deniers will get their asses kicked sooner than we thought unfortunately the methane bully will be after us believers also.

Arthur on Tue, 15th Apr 2014 12:07 am 



With a little bit of bad luck, the ‘next great thing’ after fracking.

SilentRunning on Tue, 15th Apr 2014 1:09 am 



I’m confused. How can there EVER be shortages of fossil fuels when the cornies keep telling us that there is infinite amount of fuel out there if only we apply human innovation?

Trent on Tue, 15th Apr 2014 3:13 am 



believe or not I am pulling against this development…but humans can make this happen I am afraid….

Poordogabone on Tue, 15th Apr 2014 4:39 am 



The Japanese are already betting on this. They def need an energy source, no oil no coal no NG and nuclear did not worked too well. They put a lot of research into MH extraction with little results so far: Costly is the keyword.

Dave Thompson on Tue, 15th Apr 2014 1:49 pm 



If this is not an indicator of peak oil, going after an energy resource that is so far out, we all then owe an apology to our corporate overlords.

chilphil1986 on Tue, 15th Apr 2014 2:37 pm 



As I understand it, the whole problem with reporting that methane as having a short half-life in the atmosphere is a problem since atmospheric methane that does not feed into other parts of the methane cycle eventually decays into CO2 as part of that ten year half-life. Regarding methane as a ten-year threat is overly simplistic, in my opinion. It’s a bigger threat than most brief overviews will tell you.

bobinget on Tue, 15th Apr 2014 4:05 pm 



I agree completely Chill Phil. First of all, no inexpensive
method for MASS collection actually exists. Japanese are in desperation mode. If they owned practical harvest technology Japanese would not still be seeking solutions.

Meanwhile permafrost keeps melting.
Roads, forests, pipelines, housing, offering visible
reminders of methane escaping into the atmosphere.
While capturing a tiny portion for human consumption could someday be possible, the inescapable truth is catastrophic, the oceans simply cannot absorb much
more abuse without serious ramifications for climate and food chains.

http://www.wunderground.com/news/melting-arctic-permafrost-looms-major-factor-warming-climate-change-20130927

bobinget on Tue, 15th Apr 2014 4:31 pm 



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_methane_release

http://www.livescience.com/41476-more-arctic-seafloor-methane-found.html

The Probability, as Greg T so succinctly puts it for ‘runaway greenhouse’ or as I like to put it: Venus,
is getting embarrassingly obvious.

In 2013 this planets so called ‘defense’ expenditures
totaled one one Trillion seven forty seven Billion$
Military and weapons for same.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures

In defense of the planet, governments collectively spent $12.78. )-;
Wikipedia, has no totals for alt.energy.

Australia just cut solar and wind power subsidies.
Germany, once the world’s leader in alternative energy
cuts funding for wind and solar.
US Congress voted, along party lines, to forbid further study of climate change by National Oceanographic.
Study is to be restricted to weather prediction only.

If politicians can bury their heads up their collective asses, do we?

SRSrocco on Tue, 15th Apr 2014 4:35 pm 



Yeah, methane is 100 times the warming potential of carbon on a 2-5 year time frame.

Furthermore, the lunatics at the EIA don’t need to figure out a way to mine methane hydrates… all they have to do is go to the Arctic where its being released in spades for free.

steve

Trent on Tue, 15th Apr 2014 7:32 pm 



They will figure it out and fry us all….unfortunately….there is no thinking just panic and how to keep BAU going on a little bit longer…

Boat on Tue, 15th Apr 2014 10:17 pm 



So climate change is warming the planet and the oceans. Maybe harvesting it, burning it, cleaning it in a controlled environment it may be safer than letting mother nature do it for us. All the more reason for a carbon/C02 tax.