The Japanese government plans to start gas extraction from methanol from the methanhydrate deposits, which were earlier discovered in the Japanese Sea, in autumn 2016, reported Nikkei newspaper today.
If the Japanese specialists manage to establish a wide-scale production, this will help the country to solve energy problems to a significant degree. The methanhydrate resources near the shore of Aiti and Mie prefectures could be theoretically enough to cover Japan’s demand in gas. The government plans to start commercial production by 2023.
In March 2913 for the first time Japan managed to extract natural gas from methanhydrates extracted from the Pacific Ocean bottom. However, then trial extraction lasted only six days instead of the planned two weeks, because the sand has gotten into the imperfect technologies, which interrupted their work. These and other problems are expected to be solved during the forthcoming trial production.
Methanhydrate or hydrate of methanol is a combination of gas, methanol and water, which resembles snow or thawed ice. This resource is widely available in nature, for instance in the permafrost zone. There are huge resources of methanhydrate under the ocean bottom, but until now their development was considered unprofitable. However, Japanese specialists assure that they have managed to find relatively profitable technologies. There are many methanhydrate fields near the Japan’s shore, which lie on the depth of about 50 meters under the bottom surface and form the layers from 10 cm to 1 meter in the ground.
