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SpaceNut

Administrator

From: New Hampshire

Registered: 2004-07-22

Posts: 29,431

Re: Anaerobic Microbes caused - Natural gas or Methane in coal mines

Discovery Of Real-Time Natural Gas Formation Offers Prospect For Renewable Energy Resource

Researchers at Luca Technologies have made a discovery regarding natural gas production in Wyoming's Powder River Basin that could lead to a renewable source of energy for generations to come.

The Powder River Basin coal mines are generating natural gas in real time through the ongoing activity of anaerobic microbes (bacteria that live in the absence of oxygen) resident in those coal fields.

Methane production by these microbes can be stimulated by the introduction of additional nutrient compounds.

Sort of sounds like the methane measurements on Mars.

SpaceNut

Administrator

From: New Hampshire

Registered: 2004-07-22

Posts: 29,431

Re: Anaerobic Microbes caused - Natural gas or Methane in coal mines

bump

a green way for coal....

edit
send it to mars as we can use it there safely

Calliban

Member

From: Northern England, UK

Registered: 2019-08-18

Posts: 3,793

Re: Anaerobic Microbes caused - Natural gas or Methane in coal mines

Interesting link.  I don't have access to Science Direct anymore, so cannot access the full article.
https://www.lpi.usra.edu/planetary_news … s-methane/

If there are methane clathrates in the shallow subsurface on Mars, they would make a plastics industry energetically much easier.  They also provide a direct fuel for rovers and other vehicles.  Water canbbe electrolysed to produce hydrogen and oxygen.  The hydrogen can be used as a reducing agent for metals production and ammonia production.  The oxygen can ge liquefied.

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"Plan and prepare for every possibility, and you will never act. It is nobler to have courage as we stumble into half the things we fear than to analyse every possible obstacle and begin nothing. Great things are achieved by embracing great dangers."