中国点燃了可燃冰,要改变世界的能源格局了
For the first time, Chinese engineers have successfully extracted natural gas from icy deposits beneath the South China Sea. Just last year, China's government announced that geologists had found new reserves of methane hydrate - also known as 'flammable ice' - and now it looks like they've managed to harvest some of it, bringing the world a step closer to harnessing this untapped energy source. "If gas is present at sufficient concentrations beneath the seafloor within the gas hydrate stability field, you'd expect it to be in the form of hydrates," New Zealand-based geoscientist, Ingo Pecher from the University of Auckland said. But that stability field is easily disrupted if you change either pressure or temperature, releasing all that trapped methane into the water. That's why successfully extracting gas from methane hydrates is such a big deal for engineers. The gas deposits are densely packed - 1 cubic metre of methane hydrate can release 164 cubic metres of natural gas if brought to the surface, making it a valuable fuel resource. Researchers think there could be immensely abundant gas hydrate reserves all around the world, possibly exceeding all other fossil fuels combined. Now China has announced that their floating gas extraction platform in the South China Sea has borne highly promising results, and not just for experimental purposes, but for potential commercialisation. Engineers drilled to the bottom of the sea and depressurised the hydrates right there, bringing the gas to the surface. According to reports in Chinese media, they managed to get as much as 35,000 cubic metres of gas a day. Countries such as US, Japan, China, India and South Korea have invested hundreds of millions of dollars into exploring methane hydrates, but they've all been slow-going in developing the most cost- and energy-efficient method of extraction. China's latest success is a promising step towards commercialisation of this energy-intensive fuel source. |