|
DOE announces methane hydrate funding $3.8 million will go to six university research projects to enhance knowledge of hydrate behavior and fuel source potential ALAN BAILEY Petroleum News
The U.S. Department of Energy has announced that is awarding $3.8 million in funding for research into the behavior of naturally occurring methane hydrate deposits. The funding will be split between six university research projects.
Methane hydrate is a solid material consisting of natural gas trapped in an ice-like lattice of water molecules. The material, stable within a certain range of relatively low temperatures and somewhat high pressures, can concentrate huge quantities of gas. And, with the possibility of producing gas from the hydrates by elevating the temperature or reducing the pressure, the hydrates could provide a major source of gas for fuel. But the sustained and economic production of gas from hydrates has yet to be demonstrated. There are huge quantities of the hydrates at the base of the permafrost under the North Slope of Alaska, and in subsea environments in a number of regions around the world.
National research program Since the passage of the Methane Hydrate Research and Development Act of 2000 DOE has been leading a national program of methane hydrate research in collaboration with federal and international government agencies, universities and industry. That research has included the drilling of hydrate test wells on the North Slope.
DOE says that the newly funded research will assess hydrate-bearing geologic systems; the role of these systems in the natural environment; the potential of the systems for commercial methane hydrate gas production; and the environmental implications of methane hydrate resource recovery.
Six projects The new funding will go to the following projects:
• A study by the University of Rochester into the implications for the ocean-atmosphere system of methane leakage from dissociating hydrates, including an assessment of methane emissions from the U.S. Atlantic margin upper continental slope in the mid-Atlantic zone.
• A laboratory evaluation by the University of Texas at Austin of the attributes of gas hydrate-bearing sands in response to pressure reduction, to enhance the understanding of hydrate system behavior, improve the ability to simulate hydrate production and make possible more accurate estimates of the potential of hydrates as a viable energy source.
• A laboratory evaluation by Louisiana State University of the migration of fine-grained particles during hydrate gas production, to guide the reservoir modeling on promising field sites and improve methane hydrate production assessments.
• A study by Texas A&M University Engineering Experiment Station into the armoring by hydrates of methane bubbles in water, to help clarify the role of hydrates in the natural environment.
• Texas A&M University Engineering Experiment Station will also conduct research, advancing the capabilities of a model for simulating hydrate system behavior, to improve the understanding of deep oceanic and Arctic hydrate deposits, and to improve the assessment and prediction of methane hydrate production capabilities.
• An assessment by the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, University of California, of the use of electromagnetic technologies for locating methane hydrate deposits, including the supply of data from locations of known or suspected hydrate deposits in the Gulf of Mexico.
| 