I was doing my daily search for interesting new in Asia yesterday when I found an article talking about “flammable ice”. I’m thinking, “That sounds cool, but what the heck does it mean?”
Well, according to the article, “Japan became the first nation to successfully extract natural gas from underwater deposits of methane hydrate, a frozen gas sometimes referred to as “flammable ice”.
This could be big for Japan, a country who has none of its own natural resources. After years of using nuclear energy, only to have it blow up in their faces, literally, and being heavily critisized for even considering continued useage of such energy, they may soon have an energy source to call their own.
Using a method of depressurization, Japanese researchers were able to turn that methane hydrate into methane gas. Unfortunately, because the technology needed for this is still very young and undeveloped, it is too costly to be profitable, within the next 5 years or so, Japan hopes to have this new energy source ready for mainstream production in order to replace the nuclear energy.
It’s really exciting to see these kinds of developements because it really makes you wonder what else humanity will come up with next. The world still has useful elements that we havent even begun to understand. Let’s see where this takes us.