Permafrost region

Majorowicz Osadetz (2001) reported that the Mallik gas hydrate-bearing deposit in permafrost regions tends to occur at depths of 700 m to 1400 m where the permafrost is 100 m to 900 m thick. The Mallik 2002 Gas Hydrate Production Research Well Program conducted scientifically constrained production tests of the natural gas from the Mallik gas hydrate deposit, which is situated in the Mackenzie Delta on the coast of the Beaufort Sea, Northwest Territories, Canada (Dallimore et al. 2005a Satoh et al. 2005). Gas hydrate production tests demonstrated the potential for possible commercial production. Japan intends to establish commercial production from gas hydrates within the time frame of conventional natural gas production from the Mackenzie Delta (Yonezawa 2003). 

Pham, N., Sego, D.C., Arenson, L.U., Smith, L., Gupton, M., Neuner, M., Amos, R.T., Blowes, D.W., Smith, L. 2009. Diavik Waste Rock Project Heat Transfer in a Permafrost Region. In Proceedings of the 2009, Securing the Future and 8hICARD, June 22-26, 2009, Skelleftea, Sweden. 

The third period, from the mid-1960s until the present, began with the discovery that nature predated man s fabrication of hydrates by millions of years, in situ in both the deep oceans and permafrost regions as well as in extraterrestrial environments. 

Shoji and Langway (1982) described air hydrates found with ice cores off Greenland, while Tailleur and Bowsher (1981) indicated the presence of hydrates associated with coals in permafrost regions. Hondoh (1996) suggested that deep ice hydrates of air in Antarctica can be used to predict the Earth s ancient climate. Such hydrates are formed from air imbedded in snowfall and have been buried at pressure for hundreds of thousands of years. Rose and Pfannkuch (1982) have considered the applicability of the Deep Gas Hypothesis to the origin of methane in hydrates. 

Makogon (1965) announced the presence of gas hydrates in the permafrost regions of the Soviet Union. Since that time there have been two extreme views of in situ hydrate reserves. In one view, they have been ignored, presumably because they were considered to be too dispersed and difficult to recover, relative to the conventional supply of gas. In the other view, they were thought to be pervasive in all regions of the earth with permafrost (23% of the land mass) and in thermodynamically stable regions of the oceans (90% of the oceans areal extent). With further exploration and production of gas from a hydrate reservoir, a third, more realistic estimate of the hydrate resource has evolved, as the basis for this chapter. 

Layered hydrates are separated by thin layers of sediments, such as cores recovered from the Blake-Bahama Ridge. Such hydrates probably occur both offshore and in permafrost regions. 

Estimates place the world reserves of natural gas hydrates as being in the region of 5 X 1013 m3 on land, mostly in the permafrost regions of Alaska and Siberia, as well as a further 5-25 X 1015 m3 of gas in the oceans, particularly around Central America. This figure is around twice that of the total fossil fuel reserve this is an enormous wealth of energy which will become increasingly important as fossil fuels run out. Indeed, in the Russian Federation the enormous gas hydrate deposit at Messoyakha has been used as a natural gas source since 1971. 

Socki RA, Gibson EK Jr, Lauriol B, Clark ID, Romanek CS, Golden DC (2002) Stable isotope enriched carbonates from the karst permafrost region of Northern Yukon, Canada a Mars analog. In Lunar and Planetary Science Conference XXXIII. Houston, TX. Abstract 1801... 

Heat of fusion (J/cm ) 347 514-640 Low heat of fusion ensures less thawing of permafrost region during CBS setting... 

Methane hydrates have attracted much attention as future energy resources because of the enormous amounts of those deposits. Because methane has fewer carbon atoms than all other fossil fuels and the amount of exhaust CO2 is relatively small when it bums, hydrates are considered to be cleaner energy resources. Various researchers have reported that they have accumulated extensively in permafrost regions and in sediments beneath the deep ocean floor. ... 

Russian scientists (Vasil ev et al. 1970) were the first to recognize that methane in natural systems could form gas hydrate deposits wherever the pressure and temperature conditions were favourable. These ideas were followed by discovery of gas hydrate, first in the permafrost regions of Russia (Makogon et al. 

Ling F and Wu Z. 1999. Numerical simulation of the influence of seepage on temperature field of roadbed in permafrost regions. Chinese J. of Glasiology Geocryology, 21(2), pp. 115-119. 

In the longer term, an oil shortage can be expected in 40 to 50 years, and this will result in increased use of natural gas. The fossil fuel with the longest future is coal, with reserves for more than 500 years. The question whether natural gas reserves in the form of methane hydrate, in which more carbon is stored than in other fossil raw materials, will be recoverable in the future cannot be answered at present, since these lie in geographically unfavorable areas (permafrost regions, continental shelves of the oceans, deep sea). 

On the continental slopes, gas hydrates typically occur below 500 m water depth and within the upper 700 m of sediment, though they can go significantly deeper. In the permafrost regions, the zones can range between 100 m (in places in Siberia) and as deep as 2000 m. The exact conditions of stability depend on the composition of the hydrate. The zones where they are found depend on the... 

The subject of gas hydrates has become highly topical in recent years (Sloan, 1997), particularly since the discovery of vast amounts of natural gas hydrates under ocean floor sediments at depths >500 m and in polar permafrost regions. Gas hydrates are clathrate compounds in which variable (non-stoichiometric) amounts of gas, e.g., methane, ethane and propane, are trapped within ice crystal lattice cages . The amount of entrapped gas increases with lowering temperature and increasing pressure. It has been estimated that world-wide the amount of methane trapped in gas hydrates is around 2 x 10 m at STP, which is roughly equivalent to twice the mass of carbon in all conventional... 

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