The US Department of Energy (DOE) announced in mid-November that US$5 million would be allocated for seven US universities studying methane hydrates.
“The recent boom in natural gas production - in part due to long-term Energy Department investments beginning in the 70’s and 80’s - has had a transformative impact on our energy landscape, helping to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and support thousands of American jobs,” said US Energy Secretary Enerest Moniz. “While our research into methane hydrates is still in its early stages, these investments will increase our understanding of this domestic resource and the potential to safely and sustainably unlock the natural gas held within.”
Methane hydrates are ice-like structures with natural gas locked inside, which can be found both onshore and offshore – including under the Arctic permafrost and in ocean sediments along nearly every continental shelf in the world. The substance looks remarkably like white ice, but it does not behave like ice. When methane hydrates are “melted,” or exposed to pressure and temperature conditions outside those where the formations are stable, the solid crystalline lattice turns to liquid water, and the enclosed methane molecules are released as gas. In May 2012, the DOE, alongside Japanese partners, announced a successful field trial of methane hydrate production technologies on Alaska’s North Slope.
Managed by the DOE’s National Energy Technology Laboratory, the new projects will research alternative methods of extraction and the potential for commercialization, as well as the environmental impact of natural gas extraction from hydrate formations.
The schools chosen by the DOE are:
The University of Texas at Austin will receive $1.68 million in funds from the DOE to examine what the primary influences are on the development of persistent, massive hydrate accumulations in deep sediments below the seabed. The University will work in partnership with Ohio State University and Columbia University-Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) will receive $900,000 to investigate methane in the water column over places in the ocean floor where hydrogen sulfide, methane and other hydrocarbon-rich fluids seepage occurs, within and above the gas hydrate stability zone. MIT along with the US Geological Survey, and the University of New Hampshire, will look to determine the likelihood of released methane reaching surface water or the atmosphere and the role that “hydrate armoring” or coating of methane bubbles may have on that methane transport.
Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon, will receive $650,000, in conjunction with a separate project funded by the EU through Universities of Bremen (Germany) and Tromso (Norway), to assess the response of methane hydrates to environmental changes at the Svalbard continental margin, part of Norway’s continental shelf.
The University of Washington in Seattle, Washington, will receive $630,000 to study the effects of contemporary warming of bottom water temperatures on gas hydrate stability along the Washington Margin—the boundary between two continental plates. This study will be one of the first programs outside the Arctic to focus on the response of a gas hydrate system located at the upper edge of the gas hydrate stability zone to environmental changes.
Georgia Tech Research Corp. in Atlanta, Georgia, will receive $480,000 from the DOE to design, build, and test a new borehole-sampling tool that will measure methane hydrate-bearing sediment properties by reaching beyond the zone disturbed by drilling. The tool will be used to collect never-before-acquired data to evaluate resource recovery stability, and gas hydrate responses to environmental changes.
Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station (TEES), based in College Station, Texas, will receive $390,000 to develop a numerical model to address the many complexities associated with production from hydrate-bearing sediments. The project, in conjunction with Georgia Institute of Technology, will create a modeling tool to optimize future hydrate production-related testing.
The University of Oregon in Portland, Oregon, will receive $280,000 to develop predictive models to understand how hydrates develop, environmental forces that cause them to dissociate and disrupt sedimentary structure, and better forecasting of hydrate associated slope failure, gas escape features, and the release of methane into the water column and potentially the atmosphere.
Image courtesy of courtesy Mallik 2002 Gas Hydrate Project
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