REFILING: BizTrend: Japan aiming to use methane hydrate as alternative fuel

REFILING: BizTrend: Japan aiming to use methane hydrate as alternative fuel: "REFILING: BizTrend: Japan aiming to use methane hydrate as alternative fuel

(Kyodo) _ Japanese researchers are striving to commercialize the use of methane hydrate as an alternative fuel around 2016 amid reports that Japan has enough deposits to last hundreds of years.

Methane hydrate, a combination of methane and ice, is deposited in low-temperature and high-pressure areas and generally found far beneath the ocean floor and in permafrost regions.
Methane hydrate is being studied worldwide as a potential fuel for the future. Researchers are looking into developing safe and dependable technologies to produce natural gas from methane hydrates.

A large quantity of methane hydrate is believed to exist in the seas surrounding Japan.
The state-backed Research Consortium for Methane Hydrate Resources in Japan excavated about 30 sites during the January-May period and collected samples from the seabed.
Keiji Sugihara, an official of Japan Oil, Gas and Metals Natural Corp., said methane hydrate was detected at several places. The JOGMEC is the secretariat of the consortium.

The consortium, set up with the cooperation of the industrial and academic sectors, is analyzing the samples and testing ways to extract methane gas from methane hydrate deposits.

It plans to complete extraction tests from waters around Japan by 2011 with the aim of achieving commercialization of methane hydrate in 2016 or after.

Japan is leading the world in this area, according to JOGMEC, as it has developed, among other things, a container that can store samples under low-temperature and high-pressure conditions.

Private Japanese firms are also interested in methane hydrate because of its promising potential as a future energy source.

In the 1990s, Tokyo Gas Co.'s Frontier Research Insitute began studying ways to store and transport methane hydrate. Hokuriku Electric Power Co. is also looking into how to deal with the carbon dioxide that emerges when methane is released from the hydrate.

Methane hydrate will not be able to meet energy demands but will be potent alternative energy to oil, Sugihara said.

***** MY COMMENTS ****

The Japanese will leap frog us on this technology - just like they did on Hydrogen technology and I predict that in 10 years AMERICA WILL BE BUYING ANOTHER JAPANESE CLEAN TECHNOLOGY in the form of Patent LICENSES - JUST LIKE THE AMERICAN CAR MAKERS MISSED THE BOAT ON Hydrogen Cogeneration and now have to license the best technology from Toyota. I predict that in ten years "Forward thinking" American Oil Companies will be licensing this Methane Hydrate extraction and processing technology from Japanese Companies or their national consortium.