Let's burn farty ice!

[Taro Toporific]

Resource-poor Japan is banking on ice that burns as future fuel source
03 July 2003/ Associated Press
TOKYO -- Like an ice that burns, methane hydrate is cold, white, and would light up like a gas stove if held to a flame. And so much of the frozen fuel naturally blankets the sea beds off Japan ...Japan is not alone in pursuing methane hydrate, but perhaps it is the most desperate...
Yonezawa, the government researcher, said temperature control is the hardest part: how to warm vast beds of the icy substance and catch the released methane....
Retrieval methods are largely hypothetical and mostly untried. One idea tabled in Russia was to pump nuclear waste under the permafrost to thaw fields of hydrate.

[DJEB]

methane hydrate

It's a very effective green house gas. If the polar ice caps melt a bit more and the frozen methane hydrate melts, we're cooked!

[ramchop]

It's a very effective green house gas.

[Taro Toporific]

[floatr][/floatr]
Signs of large-scale reserves of natural gas found off Japan
TOKYO, February 21 (Itar-Tass) - The signs of large-scale reserves of natural gas have been found near the shores of Japan. The press reported on Tuesday that a group of researchers, among them specialists of Tokyo Univesity and the National Agency for the Ocean Study and Exploration, have discovered large deposits of methane hydrate (also known as crystalline hydrate) on the bed of the Sea of Japan at a depth of about 900 metres, approxiamtely 30 kilometres north-west of the port of Naoetsu (Niigata Prefecture)...more...

[Mulboyne]

[floatr][/floatr]Bloomberg: Japan Mines `Flammable Ice,' Flirts With Environmental Disaster
Fifty-five million years ago the world's climate was catastrophically changed when volcanoes melted natural gas frozen in the seabed. Now Japan plans to drill for the same icy crystals to end its reliance on imported energy. Billions of tons of methane hydrate, frozen chunks of chemical-laced water buried in sediment some 3,000 feet under the Pacific Ocean floor, may help Japan win energy independence from the Middle East and Indonesia. Japanese engineers have found enough "flammable ice" to meet its gas use demands for 14 years. The trick is extracting it without damaging the environment..."Methane hydrate was a key cause of the global warming that led to one of the largest extinctions in the earth's history," says Ryo Matsumoto, a University of Tokyo scientist who has studied frozen gas since 1987. "By making the best use of our wisdom, knowledge and technology, we should be able to utilize this wisely as a new energy"...more...

[kurohinge1]

. . . Japan Mines `Flammable Ice' . . . The trick is extracting it without damaging the environment..."Methane hydrate was a key cause of the global warming that led to one of the largest extinctions in the earth's history," says Ryo Matsumoto, a University of Tokyo scientist who has studied frozen gas since 1987. "By making the best use of our wisdom, knowledge and technology, we should be able to utilize this wisely as a new energy"...

I sometimes pondered how the world would end.

Now I know.

[emperor]

In Siberia there's an area of permafrost spanning a million square kilometres - the size of France and Germany combined - & it's started to melt for the first time since it formed 11,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age...

A while ago I saw a show in which a BBC tv presenter & a scientist go out to a frozen lake and chip some small holes & light pockets of methane, there was a impressive large strong continous flame everytime.
It was weird to see fire shooting out of ice like that...

US probably dont need to nukes to attack that part of Russia - a simple carpet bombing should set the whole place ablaze..

[Mulboyne]

AFP: Japan, US say to cooperate on new 'ice' energy

Japan and the United States on Saturday agreed to cooperate on research into methane hydrate, known as the "ice that burns" which is seen as a promising future energy source. Energy ministers from the world's two largest economies signed the cooperation agreement at a meeting in northern Japan that comes amid mounting concern about record-high oil prices. Methane hydrate, or methane gas trapped in frozen water, looks like ice but burns. Its deposits can be found in permafrost regions and seabeds. Under the three-year cooperation agreement, Japan hopes to conduct an on-shore production test in Alaska. The deal was signed between Japan's Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Akira Amari and US Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman. The Japanese ministry and US department plan "extensive research with respect to methane hydrate exploration and resource assessment," a statement announcing the bilateral cooperation said. "To establish technology for commercial production, we have to conduct test-production for several months," a Japanese ministry official said. Japan already carried out test-production for several consecutive days in Canada, but it needs to carry out on-shore production for a longer test period, he said. The meeting in Aomori, Japan, comes after oil prices posted their biggest ever one-day rise, soaring to 138.54 dollars in New York after hawkish remarks by a senior Israeli official about oil producer Iran.

[yanpa]

Japan extracts gas from methane hydrate in world first

Japan says it has successfully extracted natural gas from frozen methane hydrate off its central coast, in a world first.

Methane hydrates, or clathrates, are a type of frozen "cage" of molecules of methane and water.

The gas field is about 50km away from Japan's main island, in the Nankai Trough.

Researchers say it could provide an alternative energy source for Japan which imports all its energy needs.

Other countries including Canada, the US and China have been looking into ways of exploiting methane hydrate deposits as well.

Pilot experiments in recent years, using methane hydrates found under land ice, have shown that methane can be extracted from the deposits.

Offshore deposits present a potentially enormous source of methane but also some environmental concern, because the underwater geology containing them is unstable in many places.

...more...