Source: indiatoday.in
The researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras are developing new techniques for extracting methane from natural gas hydrates. There has been worldwide interest in the development of techniques to extract methane gas trapped in ice-like crystalline cages called ‘Gas hydrates,’ which are present in shallow sediments along continental coastlines.
Hydrates are particularly promising methane sources in India because nearly 1,900 trillion cubic meters of methane gas lie untapped in these cages within the waters of the Indian Exclusive Economic Zone. This is 1,500 times more than the country’s present gas reserve.
About the research:
The Ministry of Earth Sciences, Govt of India, reports that Krishna-Godavari basin and Andaman Basin have large amounts of gas hydrates. This IIT Madras research towards developing techniques to extract methane from gas hydrates can enable the indigenous supply of natural gas and potentially lighten the nation’s natural gas import burden.
The research is being headed by Dr Jitendra Sangwai, Professor (Petroleum Engineering), Department of Ocean Engineering, IIT Madras, who studies state-of-art processes used to recover crude oil from offshore reservoirs in India, and includes Research Scholars Pawan Gupta and Vishnu C.
His research is being funded by IIT Madras and Department of Science and Technology (DST), Govt. of India.
“As gas hydrates are comparatively immobile and impermeable, they need to be dissociated into their constituent gas and water before the methane recovery from hydrate reservoirs is possible,” he added.
Techniques studied for the dissociation:
Four techniques are being studied in various laboratories for this dissociation, namely – thermal stimulation, depressurisation, chemical injection and carbon dioxide injection. Dr Sangwai’s team analyses the combined effects of thermal stimulation and depressurisation in one branch of study, and polymer injection in another.
