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Tag: Methane

  • Surprising amount of methane found

    Surprising amount of methane found

    Map of The Laptev Sea

    Russian scientists are baffled after finding plumes of methane in the Arctic Ocean. The scale and volume of the methane was a huge surprise to the researchers.

    The team was doing research in the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, in the Laptev Sea. The methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide, was released from the Arctic seabed.

    Igor Semiletov, of the Far Eastern branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said that he has never before witnessed the scale and force of the methane.

    “Earlier we found torch-like structures like this but they were only tens of metres in diameter. This is the first time that we’ve found continuous, powerful and impressive seeping structures, more than 1000 metres in diameter. It’s amazing,” Dr Semiletov said in the Independent.

    “I was most impressed by the sheer scale and high density of the plumes. Over a relatively small area we found more than 100, but over a wider area there should be thousands of them.”

    Source: The Independent

  • Fiery Ice, possibly the next big energy source

    Fiery Ice, possibly the next big energy source

    Burning hydrate

    Methane clathrate, also called methane hydrates, methane ice or fire ice is something that most of us are perhaps not to familiar with but could potentially have great significance for future energy use globally and especially in the Arctic.

    Methane clathrate is a crystaline form of methane gas and pure water that exists when pressure is sufficiently high, or temperature sufficiently low. Given that these conditions exist the substance looks like a lump of ice. The quantity of the substance is staggeringly abundant estimated about 300,000 trillion cubic feet locatid at the bottom of the ocean all over the world and in the Arctic permafrost. It is believed to be the cleanest and most abundant source of energy in the world.

    There is however naturally a big if involved as it’s harvesting and utilization is extremely complex. Once the material is extracted from either it’s pressure drops or temperature rises the material will expand 164 times, representing significant storage and transport issues. Due to it’s obvious problems the utilization of Methane clathrate is in it’s early stages.

    A Japanese and Candadian Science project was just concluded in the Mackenzie Delta. Over two winter the researchers drilled down more than a kilometer into a 150 meter thick layer by the edge of the Beaufort Seat at Malik which contains the most concentrated known deposit of the frozen fuel in the world. Initial results are a step in the right direction as scientists were able to sustain steady flow of gas from the hydrates for six days, where previous attempts have only sustained the flow for a few hours.

    “It’s a landmark, no doubt about it,” says Ray Boswell, technical manager of the U.S. government’s gas hydrate program. Even if there are significant challenges in the utilization of Methane clathrate or Fiery Ice but due to the quantity available of the substance and it’s environmentally friendly attributes compared to other sources of energy future developments seem to be something one should definitely be on the look for.

    Source: Arctic Focus