12, on a mission conducted by University of Bremen in Germany to conduct a search of methane clathrate
deposits on the seabottom southwest Taiwan, reports said.
Methane hydrates - also known as gas hydrates or methane clathrate
, could take the petroleum sector's next bet on the success of "unconventionals" once viable technology application underpins its commercial development viability.
Because water is also observed in this region, perhaps the material making up the bladed terrain is a methane clathrate
. A clathrate is a structure in which a primary molecular species (say water, or H2O) forms a crystalline 'cage' to contain a guest molecule (methane or CH4, for example.).
For thousands of years--and, in some cases, about 1,000,000 years--huge caches of methane have lain frozen and isolated from the atmosphere, both in the northern latitude permafrost and in the frozen seafloor methane clathrate
deposits, in which gas is trapped in a crystal lattice cage of frozen water.
It involves the powerful greenhouse gas methane, in the form of methane clathrate
, which is essentially methane trapped in ice.
6.4x1012) tons of methane is trapped in deposits of methane clathrate
on the deep ocean floor.
The primary sources for the additional methane added to the atmosphere are rice cultivation, domestic grazing animals, deep seabed frozen methane clathrate
thawing, termites, landfill out-gassing, oil and gas extraction, and coal mining.