MORGANTOWN, WV - The Department of Energy is bringing
four of its national laboratories into its gas hydrates program to take
on studies of the properties and production potential of this intriguing
-- and likely immense -- source of natural gas.
The department's National Energy Technology Laboratory will oversee new
projects at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York, the Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, both in
California, and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.
Hydrates are a cage-like lattice of ice, inside of which are trapped
molecules of methane, the chief constituent of natural gas. Scientists
know very little about the chemical, physical, and structural properties
of gas hydrates. It is generally acknowledged, however, that the amount
of methane in hydrates beneath the ocean floor and the Arctic tundra is
greater than all other known sources of natural gas ? possibly 5,000 times
more than the world's known conventional gas resources.
The Energy Department restarted its gas hydrate research program two
years ago, hoping to capitalize on deepwater and Arctic drilling advances
that have improved prospects for eventually locating and producing natural
gas from hydrates. With the nation's demand for natural gas growing, the
department is accelerating research that could reveal new information
about hydrate occurrences in nature, and that could lead to technologies
for detecting, quantifying and producing methane from these resources.
The following four proposals were chosen following a competition among
the department's national laboratories:
Brookhaven National Laboratory will study the chemical
bonding and structure, thermodynamics and kinetics of gas hydrates
using natural hydrate samples and synthetic hydrates to better understand
the stability of hydrates themselves. A second study will combine
two techniques to track methane hydrate formation, observe the rate
at which methane hydrates are formed, and estimate the amount of methane
in an average hydrate. In addition, perfluorocarbon tracers (PFTs),
chemical markers used to track oil production, will be tested, and
the best PFTs will be selected as markers to track methane production.
Project cost: $75,000.
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory will integrate
geology, geophysics and gas reservoir simulation with enhanced numerical
codes to produce geological models of four different gas hydrate deposits
representing permafrost and marine environments. The models are designed
to improve the understanding of gas hydrate behavior in porous sediments,
and emphasize operations or strategies for maximum resource recovery.
Project cost: $200,000.
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory will study
the mechanical behavior of hydrates using synthetic hydrates and controlled
mixtures of hydrates and sediment to simulate natural occurrences.
The proposed research will be correlated to existing laboratory and
sea floor measurements and computer models by measuring hydrate formation,
dissociation and physical properties. The results will contribute
to the study of sea floor stability and safety issues. Project cost:
Oak Ridge National Laboratory will use its Sea-floor
Process Simulator (SPS) to simulate natural sea floor environments
associated with gas hydrate occurrences. Activities will include evaluation
of technologies to find hydrate deposits, determine their mass and
energy flux, determine the effects of hydrates on sea floor stability
and examine methane recovery through dynamic flow experiments using
the SPS. The SPS vessel will also be used by the other national laboratories
involved in this cooperative research effort with NETL. Project cost: