PainKilla
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Methane Hydrate
Reading through a texrbook has brought this very interesting compund forth...it is a methane molecule trapped inside a crystal lattice of water,
making it ice that burns. It forms naturally in areas of cold and high pressure, and needs to be cleaned out of oil pipes located in frigid
temperatures.... a heat source like this could be very useful indeed to the madscientist, and so i am wodering as per a method to create this
interesting compound...
From what I have found this "ice" forms at 275K (2C or so) which is not too bad at all, and methane is not exactly hard to get.... high
pressure cannot be too hard to make under a proper setup, though I am not the one to know this as I do not work with pressure things at all.... anyone
have any ideas?
http://www.llnl.gov/str/Durham.html
EDIT: link to soem more info....interesting page.
[Edited on 26-12-2004 by PainKilla]
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cyclonite4
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Never heard of it, but sounds interesting.
Maybe this is what you could do (Just guessing): Construct/Acquire a thick aluminium vessel, fill it with distilled water (de-ionized), make a fitting
on the vessel for insertion of methane. Then you pressurise the container with much excess methane, and cool below 2 degrees Celcius (275 degrees
Kelvin). Would this work?
I am very interested by this. Methane can also be synthesised by the reaction of NaOH on CH3COONa under heat:
NaOH + CH3COONa ---heat--> Na2CO3 + CH4
\"It is dangerous to be right, when your government is wrong.\" - Voltaire
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neutrino
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Methane hydrate can form at around room temperatures, but this requires high pressures. There is plenty of information out there about this. If you
want stability charts, search NIST, there are plenty of data.
If you want a good, stable gas hydrate that burns, you want propane hydrate. It is stable at atmospheric pressure and a little below room temperature.
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JohnWW
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There are believed to be deposits of methane hydrate, under enormous pressures, in the abyssal plains and trenches on the deep ocean floors,
especially the Pacific Ocean which is the geologically oldest ocean. These are thought to be large enough to replace conventional oil and gas for
thousands of years. The difficulty is in getting the methane out, via pressure-resistant vertical deep-sea drilling lines several miles long, and then
compressing the stuff for transport as LNG or for introduction into land-based pipelines.
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Mr. Wizard
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Propane hydrate? Interesting. I wonder if this could be used as a mechanism to transport methane , ethane, or propane for use as motor fuel?
I'll have to do some Google searches. Another point about the possible methane hydrate seabed reserves is the danger they may pose. There was
some speculation that removing pressure on them may trigger an eruption, the same way removing pressure on a shaken soda causes it to shoot out of a
bottle. Tapping into methane hydrate bed and lowering the pressure may cause a sudden release of more gas which may then trigger the escape of more
gas than can pass through the drill pipe, and actually pass through the sea bed, releasing even more gas, and causing a mixture of methane and sea
water to come boiling up from the depths . This methane sea water 'foam' mix would not be able to support a ship, causing any shipping over
it to sink, and lowering the pressure on the sea floor, causing even more more of the methane to be released. The net effect would be to cause a huge
bubble of methane to suddenly erupt from the deep sea. A similar effect has been noted in some volcanic lakes in Africa, where Carbon Dioxide, leaking
from vents under the lake, dissolve into the water, forming a heavier CO2 saturated layer near the bottom. Every so often something disturbs the
layers and the saturated layer finds the pressure insufficient to keep the CO2 in solution, and once the bubbles start moving upward the pressurizing
surface layer is removed and the lake burps out all of it's CO2. This results in death for everything living within miles of the lake. I believe
they are now carefully removing the bottom water to degas it at a safe rate, but who knows?
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franklyn
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Akihiro Yamasaki and colleagues have found that by adding beta-cyclodextrin accelerates methane hydrate formation 5-fold. Their report is scheduled
for the 2006 Nov. 15 issue of the ACS bimonthly journal Energy & Fuels.
Cyclodextrins are a family of polymers produced from starch. Their wide range of uses includes the food, pharmaceutical and chemical industries.
Cyclodextrin is the active ingredient in a popular home deodorizing product.
Related link _
http://www.sciencemadness.org/talk/viewthread.php?tid=5975#p...
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[Edited on 27-10-2006 by franklyn]
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Chris The Great
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Well, it would look pretty cool if a gigantic bubble of methane a thousand feet across came up from the ocean floor and then exploded into a fireball
Flaming ice would be a very interesting demonstation, no? Open the cooler, take out a block of ice, and ignite it and have it burn away into a little
puddle...
Whether it would make a good heat source vs. a gas burner, I am not quite so convinced
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guy
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Have you seen the show Mythbusters?
Theres this episode where they did many KEWL experiments but it was actually cool!
They made a GIANT column of methane bubbles and ignited it.
Watch it now!
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Hoplw-JBS1A
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