Rice wins DOE funding for methane-hydrate research

Rice wins DOE funding for methane-hydrate research

BY JADE BOYD
Rice News staff

Rice recently won an $895,000 grant from the Department of Energy for methane-hydrate research. The grant was one of six awarded under a new
$4.6-million initiative to develop hydrates as a new source of energy.

Methane hydrates form at low temperatures and high pressure when methane molecules become trapped inside ice crystals. Dubbed the “ice that burns,” hydrates release gaseous methane when they melt. In the U.S., hydrates are found in offshore seabeds and beneath Alaska’s permafrost. According to the DOE, if just 1 percent of the U.S.’s hydrate resources were commercially developed, it would more than double the nation’s proved gas reserves.

The DOE is funding a team of researchers from Rice and the University of Houston to generate both data and models to help explain the wide variation in distribution of hydrates and hydrate-associated gases in natural systems.

Team members George Hirasaki and Walter Chapman, both from the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering; Gerald Dickens, Brandon Dugan and Colin Zelt, all from Earth science; and Kishore Mohanty from the University of Houston plan to build numerical models to explain and predict regional-scale hydrate differences, simulate methane production from various hydrate systems, assess the potential impacts of hot fluids on seafloor and well stability, and develop geophysical approaches that will allow operators to remotely quantify hydrate distribution without having to drill a well.