Methane hydrate

METHANE HYDRATE Climate change is an ongoing concern for many Americans and most agree that the man-made production of carbon dioxide is a contributing factor. There is an old adage that says, politics will ruin good science and the case of climate change, confirms this. To propose the answer to the problem is wind and solar, is strictly a political maneuver, to move government research funds to private individuals, who will in turn, funnel money into campaign coffers. The solution to the problem posed by climate change is simple. Move from coal to oil to natural gas. This process is already underway without much help from government. It is fueled by economics. The conversion of coal fired power plants to natural gas has reduced air pollution to 2004 levels and will continue. Many cities have converted their garbage trucks and buses to natural gas and companies are building locomotives and semi-trucks to run on natural gas. The government has wasted 150 billion dollars on renewable energy experiments and this money could have been spent more wisely, moving the transportation industry toward natural gas. Internal combustion engines using natural gas run more smoothly with less wear and tear. Fuel efficiency improves and exhaust is cleaner. Natural gas eliminates the problems of acid rain and heavy metals and in the process lowers carbon dioxide emissions. The United States has recently issued permission to build a large gas liquefaction plant where natural gas is liquefied and shipped around the globe. Countries like China who are suffering from smog can replace their coal with natural gas. The people of China will benefit most from this, since their air is contaminated with heavy metals and acid rain produced by the use of coal to fuel their power plants and the problem gets worse, as China brings on a new coal fired power plant each week. China has now surpassed the United States as the leading air polluter. Because of efforts around the world, most notably the United States conversion of power plants to natural gas during the year of 2014 the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere did not increase. The new science of fracking has vastly increased the amount of oil and natural gas and this is most evident in the United States, which has now become the world’s leading producer of both oil and natural gas. Almost all of this increase in production has been on private lands but this in only a small portion of these natural resources, most of which are located on government lands, the most important of which is the Green River Formation located in Wyoming, Colorado and Utah. It is estimated that there is enough oil and natural gas in these fields to supply the world for hundreds of years. This change in the energy business will occur in two stages. First the United States will change the current laws which prohibit the export of oil and start sending this to China so they can replace their coal plants with oil. Second the United States will build more natural gas liquefaction plants and export facilities in order to ship natural gas to Europe. This will reduce Europe’s dependency on Russia for natural gas and help solve some of the political problems currently presented by Mr. Putin. Opening up these two markets will allow the energy industry to expand, which will create new high paying jobs and spur economic development, while keeping the cost of energy low. This will also help the balance of trade problem that has plagued the United States since the 70’s. While this is going on the United States will continue the transition to a natural gas economy. The fore mentioned change in power plants will continue and be accelerated, while the transportation industry will stay on the road to replacing oil with natural gas. The first step will be the installation of liquefied natural gas pumps at the 6,000 truck stops around the country. The estimated cost is 4 million dollars each or a total of 24 billion dollars. The next move is to convert the 120,000 auto gas stations over to natural gas at a cost of $500,000 each or 60 billion dollars. This is not new science since there are about 20 million cars running on natural gas around the world today. Most homes are now heated with natural gas and the rest will be converted. An interesting sideline, is that for 500 dollars, a home unit can be purchased that will allow the use of natural gas from the home heating line, to fuel the car in the garage and eliminate the need for a trip to the gas station. As the rest of the world sees the advantages of the natural gas economy they will follow the lead of the United States and in time the whole world will be running on natural gas. When coal and oil are burned, sulfur and nitrogen compounds are spewed into the atmosphere and these mix with the moisture in the air to create acid rain. Natural gas poses no such problem. In addition coal and oil produce heavy metals like mercury and lead and once again not so with natural gas. Natural gas does produce carbon dioxide but at 40% less than coal and 30% less than oil so that still poses a problem and the solution to that is methane hydrate. The chemical name for natural gas is methane and methane hydrate is a form of methane which is found under the ocean floor in the shallow waters of the continental shelf. The continental shelf refers to the water around the continents, which extends out several hundred miles at three to six hundred feet in depth. These waters are filled with tiny living creatures whose remains settle to the ocean floor and over millions of years have created a mass of decaying organic material hundreds of feet thick. As this material is digested in the absence of oxygen, a chemical process called fermentation takes place and the main by product is methane. The gas does not rise to the surface because the low temperature and high pressure causes it to join with water molecules and form complex structure called methane hydrate. It is estimated that there is enough methane in these shallow waters to supply the world’s needs for a thousand years. Japan is a country that imports most of its energy needs and this has become even more important since the tsunami threatened their nuclear industry, so they are one of the leaders in the new technology of extracting methane hydrate from the continental shelf. Other experiments are being conducted by a Texas University in the Gulf of Mexico and the United States government is carrying out tests in the waters around Alaska. The current science is to pump carbon dioxide down into the organic mass and extract the methane from the hydrate structure. This structure prefers carbon dioxide over methane and thus each methane molecule is replaced and released by a carbon dioxide molecule on a one for one basis. This allows the collection of the methane while simultaneously capturing and storing the carbon dioxide, in a process known as sequestration. When this process becomes more fully developed the growth in fracking will come to a halt as the move to methane hydrate will be the more efficient method of producing methane. At that time the move from coal to oil to natural gas and finally to methane hydrate will be complete and there will no longer be any additional carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere, as each molecule produced will be sequestered. The air will now be free of acid rain chemicals, heavy metal contaminants and finally no increase in carbon dioxide. When all of this information becomes commonly known, the push toward the extraction of methane hydrate will accelerate and the path of coal to oil to natural gas will be cut short. The whole industry will recognize the economic advantages as will the consumers around the world. Cheap energy has a positive effect on all industries as well as transportation. All that is needed is to get past the politics and onto the science and the world will be a better, cleaner place. The millions of Chinese who are dying from air pollution will be saved and the many others in India will be able to avoid the mistakes made in China. The developing countries of Africa which are now gearing up to build coal plants can avoid this expense and move directly to methane which is available off their coast. This will make them energy self-sufficient and allow their industries to grow more quickly. The world of methane hydrate is the future. What are we waiting for?