Alternative Fuel

Oil has been the world's biggest source of energy and fuel. The price has though gone so high that people are researching for better and cheaper alternative fuel. Oil reserves in the world could be in question because of the rising prices. Could the oil producers be limiting their production output because of that? Low supply plus big demand cause prices to jack up, one of the basics of economics.

Talking about supply, source and reserves, it is very compelling to write about Hydrate Gas. Learning about this from my brother who is a geologist, he did not exactly mention how or what it is. He just mentioned that there is big source of gas in the deepest parts of the seas and oceans. The only problem, according to him, was on how to extract it inexpensively because of extremely high pressure in the depths of the seas. The hydrate gas is formed in low temperatures combined with the high pressure under the sea. They form like ice on some surfaces of these ocean floors, where the methane bubbles come from.

Photo shown is from the site of rsc.org.

In the past week or so, a television channel made a documentary about Hydrate Gas and the exploration that was done. The exploration needed to use a special underwater transport to locate the methane bubbles. The bubbles will be very close to where frozen hydrate gases has formed. Though I had not seen the show in full, perhaps I was able to take note of the important parts. It showed small bubbles of methane gas coming from the deep sea bed in the gulf of Mexico. The methane bubbles are coming from organic matter buried deep inside the earth, million of years ago. Not far from the bubbles was the frozen formation of hydrate gas. They took some samples of to be brought up to the surface.

At the surface they showed a sample about the size of a golf ball. To test it, they lit a match close to the frozen hydrate gas. Almost instantaneously the matter caught fire. On a brief research I did on methane hydrate gas at https://www.llnl.gov/str/Durham.html, it really shows to be a very promising alternative fuel. It does have some misgivings like safety and cost of extracting it, storage and it is a greenhouse gas. It will have an effect on the earth's atmosphere just like oil. Anyway, as the site says, there is still a lot of work and research to be done and there could be some favorable surprises out of it.