SFGate is reporting on a huge methane (natural gas) leak in the "Four Corners" region of the Southwest US that was discovered in a 2003 Satellite image.
The amount of methane in the Four Corners — an area covering about 2,500 square miles — would trap more heat in the atmosphere than all the carbon dioxide produced yearly in Sweden. That's because methane is 86 times more potent for trapping heat in the short-term than carbon dioxide.
The satellite study results were initially so surprising to the scientists that they held off releasing them for several years to use ground monitors to verify what they saw from space. The ground monitors indicated three times what the European scientists had predicted using the satellite data alone. Ground measurements were even 50% higher than the EPA's estimates.
Zooming into area with Google Maps satellite view, you can see the area is covered with a web of oil and natural gas wells and has been in production for quite some time.
These aren't "fracking wells", they have been in production for longer than fracking was common.
The area is saturated with coal beds. These coal reserves aren't being extensively mined. The coal is considered low quality. Instead these coal bed are being drilled, and the coal bed methane extracted. The area is part of the San Juan Basin and holds something in excess of 40% of US proven reserves of natural gas.
Some studies suggest that the leakage of natural gas has been going on far longer than the gas extraction efforts, because the entire basin is sandstone bodies separated by impervious mudstone or claystone barriers. It is these permeability barriers that have trapped the natural gas in these sandstone beds. Natural (earthquake) cracks in these barriers have been found to be leaking gas thousands of years.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 11 2014, @03:23PM
Maybe it's just from people there eating too much shitty Mexican food?
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday October 11 2014, @03:27PM
Cover the sources, concentrate and separate the gas, sell and profit? Burned methane is 86 times less (GWP) damaging to the greenhouse effect than plain CO2.
So perhaps one can make a profit and save the environment in one go?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 11 2014, @03:34PM
The combustion of methane is less damaging because it releases much less energy. It releases so little energy that it is economically useless. It requires more energy to harvest than is obtained from combusting it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 11 2014, @03:42PM
Wait, you're saying natural gas is useless for energy? Or didn't you know that natural gas is 70-90% methane?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 11 2014, @03:58PM
It's usually 60% methane, actually. The remaining 40% is the useful part. It, obviously, is not methane. It's this part that provides the bulk of the energy. The methane is used to aide the combustion.
(Score: 4, Informative) by kaszz on Saturday October 11 2014, @04:11PM
So using Biogas that is 50–75% CH4 and 25–50% CO2 in its raw form is worthless? and a cleaning process that produce 98% CH4 using 3-6% of the output to run the upgrade process. The energy output for CH4 is −891.1–−890.3 kJ mol−1 which is like 55 MJ/kg provided the combustion is 100%. Which can be compared to gasoline at 42.4 MJ/kg.
It seems quite reasonable to get a profit out of it? the only catch is how mechanism to catch the gas from the natural sources will have to be.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 11 2014, @04:42PM
Citations so we could at least know what you are referring to would be useful. Otherwise it just looks like you are pulling random numbers out of your ass. And even if you aren't, it is hard to believe that you knew them off the top of your head, so why not show us where you got them from?
(Score: 5, Informative) by kaszz on Saturday October 11 2014, @05:17PM
If you would search for the same data you would most likely come up with similar numbers. But here it is:
Composition ratio:
Basic Information on Biogas, www.kolumbus.fi. Retrieved 2.11.07
http://www.kolumbus.fi/suomen.biokaasukeskus/en/enperus.html [kolumbus.fi]
Upgrading processing:
EVALUATION OF UPGRADING TECHNIQUES FOR BIOGAS, Margareta Persson, October 2003, School of Environmental Engineering, Lund University
http://www.sgc.se/dokument/Evaluation.pdf [www.sgc.se]
https://cdm.unfccc.int/filestorage/E/6/T/E6TUR2NNQW9O83ET10CX8HTE4WXR2O/Evaluation%20of%20Upgrading%20Techniques%20for%20Biogas.pdf?t=OWx8bmRhaWt5fDBxC3g0q7JLhJgmjPhvtVqm [unfccc.int]
Zafar, Salman. "PSA System for Biogas Upgradation". Energy Consult. Retrieved 31 December 2013
http://www.bioenergyconsult.com/psa-system-for-biogas-upgradation/ [bioenergyconsult.com]
Molecular weight and energy of combustion:
Methane
http://webbook.nist.gov/cgi/cbook.cgi?Name=methane&Units=SI&cTG=on [nist.gov]
Gasoline energy:
Thomas, George: Overview of Storage Development DOE Hydrogen Program PDF (99.6 KB). Livermore, CA. Sandia National Laboratories. 2000
http://www.eere.energy.gov/hydrogenandfuelcells/pdfs/storage.pdf [energy.gov]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 12 2014, @03:22PM
> If you would search for the same data you would most likely come up with similar numbers
Telling someone else to find the proof for your argument is not conducive to winning the argument.
Especially since most people don't have the expertise to even know what to google for.
I appreciate that you did provide citations, I don't have the expertise to evaluate them myself and your means of citation provided absolutely no direction as to how to apply them. In fact, it looks like all you did was cut-n-paste references out of a wikipedia article. So in the process of writing this post, my appreciation has decreased to where I think you are just being disingenuous - not looking to inform, only to bludgeon.
(Score: 2) by Adamsjas on Saturday October 11 2014, @05:02PM
Quote:
"the only catch is how mechanism to catch the gas from the natural sources will have to be."
Um, how about Gas Wells?
Did you click the Google maps link? That area is literally covered with gas wells.
The reason this area was heavily prospected for gas in the first place is that it would seep into water wells
and bubble out of cisterns when the area was first settled.
(Until man adds Mercaptan (stink) to natural gas, you can't tell its there, till your well explodes).
But you can't cap and collect gas from thousands of square miles. So you drill wells and take the gas from deeper layers before it seeps out.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday October 11 2014, @05:20PM
Would such technique be able to catch enough too reduce the gas release below the average of USA? and be profitable enough at least to sustain operation?
(Score: 2) by Adamsjas on Saturday October 11 2014, @07:58PM
No idea about percentage of capture that is possible.
But natural gas and profitability seem to go hand in hand.
Again look at the scale of the well field in the satellite view of the google maps.
Zoom out and you can see these well sites over a wide wide area.
Somebody thinks its profitable. Because they made a hell of an investment in that area.
Gas wells are everywhere in this country.
You will learn recognize the land use patterns on Google Maps sat view. Even played out coal fields in the eastern US have massive gas projects in place. I think you can safely put aside questions of profitability.
(Score: 1) by hendrikboom on Saturday October 11 2014, @05:24PM
It's not the energy released in burning methane that's the climate-changer. It's the methane itself. In the upper atmosphere, it reflects infrared from earth back to earth, thereby trapping heat. Just like CO2 does in the opper atmosphere, except that methane is much more effective at this than CO2.
Burning of molecule of methane produces one molecule of CO2 and a two molecules of H2O. So ignoring the water, burning it transforms a greenhouse gas into a far less effective greenhouse gas. A net gain if you're worried about the earth staying cold enough.
As for the water, I've heard it too is a greenhouse gas (anyone have a reference to this?); however, at higher concentrations it tends to precipitate out as rain, so it's not all that much of a problem.
-- hendrik
(Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday October 11 2014, @06:07PM
If you search "most common greenhouse gas" You will find that it is indeed Water Vapor [vic.gov.au].
This is dismissed out of hand when discussing climate change issues, because, living on a water world, there isn't a single thing we can do about water vapor, and burning natural gas, even in large industrial sized electricity generation stations doesn't release as much water vapor as the nearest river, lake, or ocean.
Lots of different sites also make the case that burning natural gas is far better than just letting it be released into the atmosphere, but Its not clear to me that the choice is quite that bifurcated. Combined Cycle Fuel Cell [wikipedia.org] use of Natural gas might be even more beneficial and efficient.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Silentknyght on Sunday October 12 2014, @01:12AM
Bzzt. Wrong! Water vapor is dismissed as a greenhouse gas because its residence time is orders of magnitude less than CO2. Nine to ten days for water vapor, compared with upwards of 100 YEARS for CO2.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday October 11 2014, @06:27PM
The combustion of methane is less damaging because it releases much less energy. It releases so little energy that it is economically useless. It requires more energy to harvest than is obtained from combusting it.
Natural gas can be up to nearly 100% methane because the more complex molecules like ethane get extracted for other purposes like making plastics.
Further, we're at an economic state where it would not be economical to extract methane, if it weren't energy positive.
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Saturday October 11 2014, @08:36PM
I drove through this region last weekend. The problem with harvesting this natural gas is that no one lives there.
This is why you see flares on oil wells - the gas is used to run whatever onsite machines can use it then the excess is burned. It takes a lot of effort to move gas, and in the USA with fracking there is so much local abundance the price of gas is super low.