Burning Ice Drilled from Alaska's Slope

bagboy writes to tell us that as sources of renewable energy are being sought, BP has announced a new method of extracting natural gas from ice underneath Alaska's North Slope drilling fields. "Scientists with the federal Energy Department paid $4.6 million to drill for the hot ice just below the surface of the Milne Point well, which is situated northwest of Prudhoe Bay. [...] Now, scientists from around the world are waiting for pieces of this strange ice to conduct their own tests and determine whether Alaska's frozen grounds contain untapped, clean-burning energy."

Why ruin Alaska for natural gas?

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

There are tons and tons of the stuff at the bottom of the oceans. It's called methane clathrate [wikipedia.org] and I'm sure it'd be easier to extract than ice.

methane hydrate

[Anonymous Coward]

It's almost certainly methane hydrate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane_hydrate [wikipedia.org]

Re:Why ruin Alaska for natural gas?

[MaineCoon]

Clathrates are exactly what the article is talking about, without using the word - methane trapped within the structure of water ice.

Better to burn it before it melts on it's own from global warming (if there is any possibility of that). Methane is something like 23x worse than CO2 as a greenhouse gas by mass.

Re:chemical reaction

[pz]

Clean burning fuel has nothing to do with C02, but everything to do with nitrogen and sulfer compounds, often call NOx and SOx ("x" because the number of oxygen atoms varies depending on the species). Those two classes of compounds are responsible for smog, acid rain, and, in part, the ozone layer depletion. Given the choice between burning, say, coal, which produces an excess of NOx and SOx, and methane which produce only traces of same when properly combusted, I'll take the methane, thank-you-very-much.

Re:Clean-burning? Sure...

[flyingsquid]

At any rate, it's not as if there's a shortage of natural gas in Alaska. There are vast quantities in the Prudhoe Bay fields; the problem is that without a gas pipeline, there is no way to get it out of Alaska and to market. There is a lot of interest in building a pipeline, but you can imagine the various considerations- environmental impacts, terrorism threats, negotiating terms with the Canadians and Native American peoples in order to cross their land, what cut the state gets of the revenues- so it's not happening immediately. However, it will eventually happen if energy demands keep growing the way they have been.

Re:Clean-burning? Sure...

[johnny maxwell]

clean-burning...

It should be emphasized that methane (and it is methane ice we are talking about) burns clean in that it produces but CO2 and water. However, being a fossil fuel it is dirty in the sense of CO2 emissions.

Re:chemical reaction

[Ungrounded Lightning]

In hydrocarbons burning the hydrogen provides most of the energy. Burning the carbon provides some, but the carbon is mainly useful for packing the hydrogen in a form more dense than H2 gas for convenient storage and handling.

As hydrocarbons go, CH4 has a higher ratio of hydrogen to carbon than any other molecule: Every bond on every carbon holds a hydrogen, none are "wasted" connecting to other carbons.

So if you're going to burn hydrocarbons for energy, methane releases the least CO2 for a given amount of energy produced.

Re:"Hot ice"?

[Kyle_Katarn-(ISF)]

Or you can just decrease the pressure. I remember seeing a demonstration once where water was placed in a beaker that was sealed at a near-vacuum. Even whenever submerged in liquid nitrogen, the water was still boiling and steaming.

Re:NOT 'clean-burning' by any mean

[sokoban]

it's natural gas idiot - it's as clean burning as it gets.

No, idiot. It's as dirty as it gets. It releases CO2. You didn't do well at comprehension at school, did you?

Well, "clean burning" generally refers to having low amount of sulfur and nitrogen oxide products as a result. Nitrogen and sulfur oxides are smog and acid rain respectively. Methane is pretty good about not producing much of either. You didn't do well in chemistry at school, did you?

"Hot Ice" Is Cold and Does Not Burn

[radtea]

Sigh.

It would be nice to see a science article linked on /. whose author or editor does not feel it necessary to include outright falsehoods.

Clathrates have been known about for a long time. Extracting them economically is an interesting interim move to extend the natural gas supply. Here's a nice summary of the potential and problems with this fossil-fuel energy source [energycommission.org], in which the authors somehow manage to convey information and not wilfully and deliberately mislead their readers.

Re:chemical reaction

[sholden]

But they only pump out the CO2 they've taken in. They aren't using nuclear fusion to make carbon after all.

daytime:
6H2O + 6CO2 + energy -> C6H12O6+ 6O2

nighttime:
C6H12O6+ 6O2 -> 6H2O + 6CO2 + energy

But they only respirate out 50% of the carbon they took in - so the net effect is taking in CO2 and turning it into biomass.

Re:chemical reaction

[Anonymous Coward]

The amount of water vapor in the air regulates itself by rain and surface condensation, CO2 doesn't. The amount of water vapor able to solve into air is limited by pressure and temperature. Seems to me more like general global temperature increase will accelerate the greenhouse effect because of more water vapor can be contained in the air.