New technique to extract methane gas

INN/Chennai, @infodeaofficial

IIT Madras are developing new technique to extract methane from natural gas hydrates, and in a good news great results have been achieved by the institute which has been pblished in international journals. Ther has been a great interest in developing techniques to etract methane gas trapped in Gas hydrates, present along the coastlines of india.
The Earth Sciences ministry of the Indian government  has reported that the Krishna Godavari basin and the Andaman basin have large amounts of gas hydrates, thus the recent research of IIT Madras assumes much significance in relation to enable indigenous supply of natural gas thus lightening the country'snatural gas import burden.

The research is led by the professor of the Dept of Ocean engineering  of IIT Madras Jitendra Sangwai and assisted by research scholars Pawan Gupta and Vishnu, and funded by IIT Madras and Dept of Science and Technology of the Indian government.
In a release to Infodea, IIT has stated that 4 tehniques are being studied in differet labs namely, thermal stimuation, depressurisation, chemical injection and carbon dioxide injection.
In their study on thermal stimulation and depressurisation , the research team has reported that the combination of the 2 processes is more effective than either individually. The IIT mADRAS RESEARCH TEAM HAS ALSO STUDIED THE POLYMER FLOODInG FOR THE EXTRACTION of methane from hydrates, this method is already used for oil recovery from matured crude oil fields.
The release further says that the motivation to stuy this process stemmed from the information on the dissoication kinetics of methane hydrate and the effect of the molecular weight of polymers.
It is  believed that energy content of methane occuring in hydrate form is immense, possibly exceeding the combind energy content of all other known fossil fuels.Development of emerging techniques for controlled extraction of methane from hydrates entails concerted attempts between academic, goverment and industrial labs can lead towards self sufficency in the energy sector.