Gas in coal mines to be extracted for commercial use

Chinanews, Yangquan, Aug. 14 – Gas existing in coal mines was once regarded as the No. 1 killer for coal mine workers. Now, the dangerous substance will soon become a useful material in China's energy use. Last week, scientists in Shanxi Province's Yangquan, a renowned coal city in China, announced that they had obtained the technology to extract and liquidify methane from coalbed gas.   This will be a technological revolution for China, or even for the whole world, in which China will turn the dangerous gas into a useful material. When international oil price hovers at a high level, the new technology indicates that as the largest country in the world with coalbed gas, China can put its large amounts of gas resources into commercial use.   China has 30 trillion cubic meters of methane, which is three times that of the United States. However, much of this methane is stored in coalbeds and has not been properly exploited. Every year, about 60-80 trillion cubic meters of coalbed gas are released into the atmosphere.   The new technology was jointly developed by the privately owned Beijing Zancheng International Investment Company, a think tank from the Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and the Yangquan Coal Group, a large state-owned company in China. On August 9, the three parties jointly announced the fruitful results of their new technology.   The success of the new technology has rendered the large commercial use of coalbed gas feasible. The Beijing Zancheng International Investment Company intends to build several large coalbed gas processing plants (with a processing capability of 20,000 tons, 60,000 tons, and 80,000 tons each) by exploiting the existing coalbed gas resources in Yangquan Coal Group. Their plan indicates that a large-scale commercial use of coalbed gas resources will soon kick off.