Release Date: June 27, 2000

With projects ranging from studies of ice-like hydrates that may contain huge sources of natural gas, to a new type of gas-powered generator based on ramjet aircraft engine technology, the U.S. Department of Energy is adding a broad slate of new efforts to its research program to boost prospects for natural gas in the nation's energy future.

The nine winning projects are among more than 40 new research ventures the Energy Department expects to identify in the next few days - all selected from a wide-ranging competition that spanned virtually every aspect of the agency's fossil energy research and development program.

Pending completion of upcoming contract negotiations, the Energy Department plans to award more than $6 million to the following projects. The winning proposers will add $1.7 million of their own funding to the federal share.  [click on proposer name for more details]

Natural Gas Supply

• University of Mississippi, University, MS, for a multisensor monitoring station in the Gulf of Mexico to study natural gas hydrates beneath the ocean floor;
• Clarkson University, Potsdam, NY, to develop computational techniques that can measure the behavior of gas hydrates and predict possible safety problems;
• University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY, which will team with the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics to study the 3-dimensional structure and properties of methane hydrate deposits off the South Carolina coast.
• Gas Research Institute, Chicago, IL, to determine the feasibility of using a laser to drill natural gas wells;
• TerraTek, Inc., Salt Lake City, UT, to improve a novel "down-hole hammer" drilling technique which uses the power of the drilling fluid to help drive a drill bit into a gas-bearing formation;
• Cementing Solutions Inc., Houston, TX, to develop an ultra-lightweight cement that could help lower the costs of completing natural gas wells.

Natural Gas Advanced Turbines and Engines

• Ramgen Power Systems, Inc., Bellevue, WA, to design and test a pre-prototype version of an innovative concept that uses the supersonic thrust of ramjets to spin an electric power generator;
• Siemens Westinghouse Power Corporation, Pittsburgh, PA, to study a way to capture and recycle the heat inside a gas turbine to boost efficiency;
• Rolls-Royce Allison Engine Co., Indianapolis, IN, to develop a conceptual design of a fuel-flexible turbine system that could be integrated into fuel cell hybrid modules.

The projects will be managed by the Energy Department's newly created Strategic Center for Natural Gas, part of the agency's National Energy Technology Laboratory. They were selected from a competition begun last fall when the department's Office of Fossil Energy issued a "broad agency announcement" covering 14 technical topics throughout its coal, oil and natural gas research programs. Selections announced today cover two of the competition's areas of interest: Natural Gas Supply and Infrastructure, and Advanced Turbines and Engines.

• University of Mississippi, University, MS, will establish a multisensor monitoring station in the Gulf of Mexico to increase understanding of the nature of natural gas hydrates beneath the ocean floor and the role hydrates may play in seafloor instabilities. Gas hydrates are ice-like crystals that trap natural gas under conditions of high pressures and low temperatures, such as those found on the ocean floor. The potential of hydrates as a long-term source of natural gas is huge, but additional research must be conducted before viable production methods can be developed.

  To help provide needed information, the University's Center for Marine Resources and Environmental Technology will study gas hydrate mounds and hydrocarbon vents in the Gulf of Mexico. University researchers are especially interested in understanding the relationship between these geologic features and episodes of instability on the ocean floor that can create hazards to drill rigs and undersea piping.Since keeping research vessels onsite for extended periods of time can be expensive and difficult, observations of the mounds and vents tend to be "snapshots" taken infrequently. Yet, these mounds and vents can change within a matter of days. To provide almost continuous observations, the University will install a remotely controlled station to monitor sea floor stability in the vicinity of a gas hydrate mount or hydrocarbon vent in the northern Gulf of Mexico. The Department of Energy funding will be used for a portion of the development and associated laboratory work.

  Proposed DOE share: $650,000; participant share: $130,000; project duration: 12 months. Contact: J. Robert Woolsey, (662) 915-7320.

• Clarkson University, Potsdam, NY, will add to the understanding of natural gas hydrates so that a computational tool can be developed to design technologies capable of harvesting natural gas from hydrates beneath ocean floors and locked in permafrost. Although methane hydrates in the oceans and in permafrost may be a potentially enormous source of natural gas, scientists do not have a complete understanding of the process in which natural gas is released from hydrates and the resulting natural gas and water flows. Furthermore, the associated safety problems due to gas pressure buildup during drilling in a hydrate layer are not fully understood.

• The primary goal of this project is to provide a fundamental understanding of the conditions that cause the natural gas to disassociate from the ice-like hydrate within sediments. Using a multiphase flow laboratory at the University, researchers will be able to visualize and measure the way hydrates disassociate. Computational models will be developed to predict the rate of natural gas pressure buildup during drilling and the way gas and water flows in a reservoir as the hydrates release their gas. These models will be valuable tools that can help address safety related issues.

  Proposed DOE share: $261,944; participant share: $72,797; project duration: 36 months. Contact: Goodarz Ahmadi, (315) 268-2322.

• University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY, will team with the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics, Travis County, TX, to pursue basic research - such as 3-dimensional structure and physical properties - of a methane hydrate deposit on Blake Ridge, off the South Carolina coast. Researchers want to determine the linkage between hydrate concentrations and seismic characteristics.

  The research will build on surprising observations that came from the first measurements of hydrate and natural gas taken in 1995 on the Blake Ridge offshore of South Carolina. The observations showed a thick zone of natural gas beneath the hydrate formation. New interpretations of this "free gas zone" have revealed complex structures interlaced with faults and possibly, the movement of free gas into the hydrate formation.The new study will be a joint Department of Energy-National Science Foundation venture to improve the 3D seismic images and deploy a new array of ocean-bottom seismometers to allow never-before-seen seismic images of a hydrate deposit.

  Proposed DOE share: $199,475; participant share: $55,857; project duration: 36 months. Contact: W. Steven Holbrook, (307) 766-2427.

• Gas Research Institute, Chicago, IL, will team with the Colorado School of Mines and Argonne National Laboratory to determine the feasibility of using a laser to drill natural gas wells. A spinoff of Cold War military technologies, the novel drilling system would transfer light energy from lasers on the surface, down a borehole by a fiber optic bundle, to a series of lenses that would direct the laser light to the rock face. Initial tests have shown the potential for lasers to cut through virtually any type of rock, but researchers still need to resolve such technical issues as how to send the necessary energy 20,000 feet or more into the wellbore and aim the energy beam with directional and rate control. If such a system proves feasible, it could significantly increase drilling speed and reduce costs.

  Proposed DOE share: $500,000; participant share: $214,291; project duration: 36 months. Contact: Richard Parker, (773) 399-5419.

• TerraTek, Inc., Salt Lake City, UT, will benchmark the performance of a fluid drilling hammer and recommend ways to improve its performance. Downhole hammer systems convert a portion of the power resident in the drilling fluid into mechanical force that drives the drill bit into the formation. Several downhole hammer tools are now available for boreholes where it is possible to use air as the drilling fluid, but hammer drilling using fluids under high borehole pressures has experienced problems. Nonetheless, if the technology can be developed, these so-called "mud hammers" could be especially useful in drilling into deeper hard rock basins. They could also provide an opportunity for other drilling advances, for example, serving as a source of sound waves for "seismic-while-drilling" look-ahead systems.

  Proposed DOE share: $338,000; participant share: $108,000; project duration: 24 months. Contact: Arnis Judd, (801) 584-2400.

• Cementing Solutions Inc., Houston, TX, will develop an ultra-lightweight cement to improve efficiency and reduce costs of cementing operations associated with completing natural gas wells. Drillers inject cement into the annulus outside of the casing in a wellbore to physically support the weight of the casing, protect the casing from corrosion, and prevent fluids from migrating upwards outside of the casing. In this project, researchers will study the use of ultralight hollow spheres that would be added to reduce the weight of the cement, increase its strength and make it easier to set into place.

  These new type of cementing approach could help reduce the safety and environmental hazards created by cementing failtures. The Minerals Management Service estimates that, due to cementing failures, more than 30% of well producing in the Gulf of Mexico have excessive gas in the wellbore outside the pipe.

  Proposed DOE share: $668,070; participant share: $171,306; project duration: 24 months. Contact: Fred Sabins, (713) 957-4210.

• Ramgen Power Systems, Inc., Bellevue, WA, will test a pre-prototype version of Ramgen's Brayton cycle-based power-generation system. In the engine design, a single, high-speed rotating disk replaces the conventional multistage compressor, combustor and multistage turbine. This disk harnesses the proved technology of the ramjet flight propulsion engine to a rotary application to generate electricity.

  A pre-prototype Mach 2 Ramgen engine operating on natural gas has been constructed by the company and is being tested in Tacoma, WA. In this new project, engineers will further develop the Mach 2 engine and design a second "Beta" engine that could use "waste methane" released from a coal mine during mining operations. The projected capability of the Ramgen technology to operate on a wide range of dilute fuels at low pressures could lead to important new market opportunities.

  Proposed DOE share: $2.5 million; participant share: $632,000; project duration: 8 months. Contact: Glenn Smith, (425) 828-4919.

• Siemens Westinghouse Power Corporation, Pittsburgh, PA, will join with Texas A&M University to study an in-situ reheat concept for gas turbines. Capturing and using the waste heat inside the turbine could improve the efficiency of new power plants by 2 to 4 percent, reduce fuel costs, lower nitrogen oxide emissions and, ultimately, reduce the cost of electricity. In addition to developing a reheat stage conceptual design, researchers will study new methods fo injecting fuel and for using the fuel to cool the turbine blades. Texas A&M will focus on aerodynamic studies to help resolve key technical issues related to the reheat concept.

  Proposed DOE share: $600,060; participant share: $200,205; project duration: 27 months. Contact: Claire Halucks, (412) 256-2736.

• Rolls-Royce Allison Engine Co., Indianapolis, IN, will evaluate the market potential and conceptual design of small gas-fired turbines initially sized at approximately 0.5 megawatts but scalable to 5 megawatt turbines that could be integrated with a fuel cell in hybrid power systems up to 30 megawatts. One goal will be to develop a system that could replace some of the natural gas with low cost "reasonably dirty" alternate fuels that could be made from such sources as biomass without costly intensive cleanup. Another goal will be to improve key components that will result in a machine capable of achieving 100,000-hour life expectancies. Such units would be particularly attractive in distributed generation applications as an environmentally superior replacement for small diesel-powered generators.

  Proposed DOE share: $243,000; participant share: $146,000; project duration: 12 months. Contact: Bob Moritz, (317) 230-3614.