Exploiting coalbed methane and protecting the global environment

Conference · Tue Dec 31 04:00:00 EST 1996

OSTI ID:484415

Yuheng, Gao

The global climate change caused by greenhouse gases (GHGs) emission has received wide attention from all countries in the world. Global environmental protection as a common problem has confronted the human being. As a main component of coalbed methane, methane is an important factor influencing the production safety of coal mine and threatens the lives of miners. The recent research on environment science shows that methane is a very harmful GHG. Although methane gas has very little proportion in the GHGs emission and its stayed period is also very short, it has very obvious impact on the climate change. From the estimation, methane emission in the coal-mining process is only 10% of the total emission from human`s activities. As a clean energy, Methane has mature recovery technique before, during and after the process of mining. Thus, coalbed methane is the sole GHG generated in the human`s activities and being possible to be reclaimed and utilized. Compared with the global greenhouse effect of other GHGs emission abatement, coalbed methane emission abatement can be done in very low cost with many other benefits: (1) to protect global environment; (2) to improve obviously the safety of coal mine; and (3) to obtain a new kind of clean energy. Coal is the main energy in China, and coalbed contains very rich methane. According to the exploration result in recent years, about 30000{approximately}35000 billion m{sup 2} methane is contained in the coalbed below 2000 m in depth. China has formed a good development base in the field of reclamation and utilization of coalbed methane. The author hopes that wider international technical exchange and cooperation in the field will be carried out.

• Research Organization: Lawrence Berkeley National Lab., CA (United States)
• OSTI ID: 484415
• Report Number(s): LBNL--39686; CONF-9611151--; ON: DE97003750
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

01 COAL, LIGNITE, AND PEAT
54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
CLIMATIC CHANGE
COAL DEPOSITS
ENERGY RECOVERY
METHANE
MITIGATION