Chinese oilmen for the first time in history extracted from the ocean floor in the South China Sea “combustible ice” – a combination of water and natural gas, which has become a crystalline substance under high pressure and low temperatures. This was reported by the Central Television of China with reference to the Ministry of Land and Natural Resources of China.
“The fact that we managed to successfully extract this mineral indicates that China has achieved unprecedented successes in terms of the theoretical base and relevant technologies in this direction, which means that our country has taken the leading position in the production of” combustible ice, “Said Li Jinfa, deputy director of the Geological Survey Department of the Ministry of Geology,” This will be as big a development as the earlier shale revolution in the US As a result, the methods of using energy in the future will undergo transformation Tion. ”
Samples were raised from a depth of more than 1.2 km. The 200-meter underwater well was 285 km southeast of Hong Kong.
According to the deputy chief engineer of the Department of Geological Research of the People’s Republic of China, Ye Jianliang, to date 120 cub. M of this energy carrier, the methane content of which is 99.5%. “We have been working for 8 days, and daily we get at least 10 thousand cubic meters of” ice fuel “from the bottom, sometimes we manage to get up to 35 thousand cubic meters a day, thus we reached the originally set task,” – said He told reporters.
As noted by the project participants, one cube. M of such a substance is equivalent to 160 cubic meters. M of natural gas in the vapor state: on 100 liters of gas the car can travel 300 km, and on 100 liters of “fuel ice” – 50 thousand km.
At the moment, other countries of the world are engaged in similar projects, in particular Canada and Japan, but none of them has been able to successfully implement the task set – it is technically difficult to extract “combustible ice” from under the seabed.
