Estimating Coal Bed Methane Volume And Some Other Energy News

Via Geology.com I came across this short tutorial on estimating available coal bed methane. Gas is adsorbed in the micro-pores within the coal with smaller amounts available as free gas in fractures. The gas content available is estimated using a Langmuir isotherm:

Source: Baker Hughes Reservoir Blog

Short but effective presentation I thought.

In other energy news, India is ready to open up bidding for exploration of shale gas in six basins, namely Cambay, Assam-Arakan, Gondawana, KG onshore, Cauvery onshore and the Indo Gangetic basin by end of 2013. Early estimates suggest that four of these basins, Cambay, KG onshore, Cauvery and part of the Gondwana (Damodar valley basin) contain up to 63 trillion cubic feet of technically recoverable shale gas. These numbers are sure to be modified as these and other basins are probed in more detail.

Finally, Amol Sharma at India Real Time takes a closer look at "Coalgate", a controversy over the Indian government allocating coal mining blocks to companies instead of auctioning them in an open bidding process. The loss to the exchequer according to the Comptroller and Auditor General calculation is about $200 billion.

What all the media hype though has missed is that the report has a lot to say about the shortfall in coal production:

The lion’s share of the report doesn’t deal with any of the issues above that have caused such an uproar, but rather India’s coal production shortfall. There’s plenty of blame for Coal India, which produces 81% of the coal in the country and is a lifeline for power generation firms. Between March 2008 and March 2011, Coal India failed to supply 54 million tons of coal it had promised companies. The report also asks why the private companies that have been “captive mines” – the so-called windfall gainers – have been so slow to get going with production. It says only 28 captive coal blocks are producing out of 194 allocated by the government. It is fair to ask why this is the case. Are there delays in getting government clearances, or are companies being inefficient?

Indian potential coal reserves are about 350 billion tons, making it the fourth largest reserves in the world, but according to coal market consultants Wood McKenzie, the future marketable reserve i.e. marketable production by 2030 is just 18 billion tons. That estimate might reflect a complex mix of conditions such as a lack of confidence in India sorting out issues related to regulatory clearances and land acquisition problems along with shortage in skilled manpower and advanced technology.  India has to import coal to meet shortfalls in domestic supply.

The Economic Times reports that coal imports could increase substantially in the future from 80 million tons per year in 2011 to 400 million tons per year by 2030, especially if domestic prices are raised to be on par with international prices.  Australia and Indonesia are major suppliers of coal to India.

World Water Day: Water Water Everywhere ...And Shale Gas

Its World Water Day.

Near my house a big site is being developed. The builder excavated a huge pit about 40-50 feet deep for underground parking only to find he had hit a prolific aquifer.

My rough calculations suggest that the hole contains on the order of 15 -20 million liters of water. That sounds a lot but I was struggling to give it a context. Then this morning I read an article on Fracking, Methane and Food Security. Fracking or hydraulic fracturing is the process of injecting shale rock with a mixture of water, sand and chemicals to pry open the shale and release the tightly bound natural gas.

Here is what the article says about the amount of water used by each well being fracked -

 “Every time a gas well is fracked, 4 to 9 million gallons of water are injected into the ground. A single well can be fracked up to 12 separate times, adding up to over 100 million gallons of freshwater used in the lifetime of a well.” (waterdefense.org)

4-9 million gallons injected every time a gas well is fracked. That's on the order of 20 odd million liters of water, as much as is contained in that hole near my house.

My neighborhood is not depending on groundwater right now, but may have to in the not so distant future. Shale gas though will be extracted in the future from wells drilled in rural India, which depends a lot on groundwater. Farmers use it for drinking purposes as well as irrigating their fields. The gas will be in sedimentary formations a couple of kilometers below the surface, but the water for fracking will be taken from much shallower aquifers that the farmers rely on for their livelihood.

Each time a gas well is fracked, 20 million liters of water will have to be diverted from aquifers underlying their fields for getting the natural gas out. Over the lifetime of a well over 400 million liters of water may be consumed by one well and in an area few tens of sq km, there may be scores of such shale gas wells.

Its early days in our goal to exploit shale gas from various Indian sedimentary basins. Let us quantitatively assess the state of our aquifers besides exploring for shale gas. Let's educate our farmers on how much water shale gas drilling is likely to use up. The residents of central Pune can afford to pump all of 20 odd million liters of groundwater away and still see water gushing out of their taps.

Farmers in the dusty hinterlands may not afford that luxury.

Sunday Humor: Knock Knock... Who's There?

Neutrino...

Well.. you're late as usual..

New Detector Weighs In: Neutrino's Don't Exceed Light Speed

Groundwater Awareness Week: Marathi Movies And Upland Farmers Of The Deccan

Geology and Livelihoods # 13

It is groundwater awareness week in the United States. What a great idea.. and why restrict it to national boundaries? Here is a story from India.



The video is from the Marathi language movie Tingya, set in the Deccan basalts of Maharashtra. In the short clip you can see a river valley. The boy - whose name is Tingya - starts running up a slope and keeps going until he reaches his house which is at a considerable altitude. Here, his family lives and farms a small plot of land.

The boy is very much attached to the family work animal, a bull named Chitangya. One day, at the crucial time of preparing the field for harvest, Chitangya falls ill. He can't work anymore and the family is forced to sell him for meat. Tingya protests vehemently and invokes the incomparable logic of children - " The neighbors grandmother has been lying sick and useless for months. Why don't they send her to be cut up for meat!?"

These are the lives of marginal farmers eking out a living on slopes and high plateaus of the Deccan. Groundwater is not mentioned in the movie but the lives of these communities is sustained by the monsoon and whatever groundwater is available. 

I have seen these situations up close. An example from near Pune.

The river is the main source of water in the valley. Fields are irrigated by lifting water from the river or from constructed holding tanks. Groundwater is also used but often is a secondary source, used for domestic consumption and for minor irrigation.  Up on the slopes and plateaus, the situation is different. Post monsoon, the only source of water is groundwater, tapped either through shallow dug wells, or channeling water seeping out of springs to holding tanks. Local irrigation networks move this water to the fields.

The structure of the lava flows control the location of groundwater and springs. Here is a schematic of the topography and geology. The steep slopes are exaggerated. The distance from the river to Tingya's home would be a few kilometers and the altitude difference a few hundred feet:

The lava pile is composed of alternating vesicular flows and compact flows. Lava when it erupts has volatiles and gases trapped in it and this results in the solidified basalt having a vesicular (cell or sac like structures which are empty or are filled with secondary minerals) texture. They also  have extensive sheet joints i.e. cracks which are parallel to the body of the flow and through which water can flow. The cracks may have originated as cooling cracks as the lava cooled and contracted or as cracks that form when the overburden was removed due to erosion. Prolonged weathering of the rock mass due to movement of water accentuates these cracks into larger openings. Compact flows, as the name suggests are denser and have sub-vertical joints and fractures, possibly of cooling or tectonic origin.

Vesicular flows and compact flows together form an aquifer unit like the one in the schematic below.

Source: ACWADAM

Rain that falls on the plateaus and slopes infiltrates through cracks. It gets stored mostly in the vesicular and sheet-jointed type of lava flow. Dug wells tap this sheet jointed unit for maximum benefit. Sheet joints of these flows when exposed along slopes are the locations of the best springs.

Tingya's family likely gets by using this type of water arrangement, a combination of dug wells and springs. Dug wells are expensive to excavate and poor families rely mainly on springs. There is sometimes a third option. And that is to pay lowland farmers to lift water from the streams or holding ponds to irrigate fields higher on the slopes. This does not come cheap though. It may cost up to several thousand rupees to irrigate an acre of wheat or vegetables. Most marginal farmers won't be able to afford this additional water source. Some families opt for a fourth option. Members migrate to cities to work in the dry season, returning to their fields in the monsoon. Many stay on permanently in the cities, supplementing family agricultural income.

These farmers need help in the form of groundwater management advice. Groundwater extraction sustains these people. But to manage this resource the key questions would be - a) how much water does the aquifer hold?  b) how much water can be extracted sustainably?  c) how much and how quickly can the aquifer be recharged, either naturally or through artificial methods?  For that, a thorough geological understanding of the aquifer is needed. Such geological expertise is not always available to farmers. Some work is being done to redress the situation. For example, much of the geology in this post is based on a field trip I took some years ago with ACWADAM , a NGO focusing on understanding the hydrogeology of the Deccan lava flows.

Tingya's family pull through their crises in the end. Chitangya fetches a decent price. They buy another animal who gives birth to a calf. Tingya sees in that calf Chitangya reborn. The cycle of life continues. Other families may not be that lucky. The story could easily end differently for them.  Monsoons may fail. Unplanned water extraction may leave wells dry. The hard basalt may become unrelenting.

Disaster then is often just one illness away. 

Science On Indian Radio

A friend recently got hooked on to Science Friday and other radio programs on NPR. We were talking about the lack of science programming on Indian radio and whether something on the lines of Science Friday will find an audience in India.

Both of us remembered that All India Radio and Gyan Vani do have educational segments that discuss primarily health issues. A guest, usually a medical practitioner, talks about one health topic.. diabetes, stress, AIDS, eye disorders and so on. On All Indian Radio, the program is uniquely geared towards keeping Indian audiences tuned in. It intersperses the discussion with the guests favorite movie songs. Listening to Bollywood music and songs is something of a craze in India and the educational segments try to use it to keep listeners attentive. Someone used to Science Friday and other science programs on western radio stations will find these programs quirky with their song and musical interludes! Gyan Vani is by comparison quite sedate with long stretches of conversation without interruption.

But why not add to the repertoire of subjects discussed? No doubt, healthy citizens make a healthy nation and the current programming is seen to be pragmatic and providing an immediate social benefit. On the other hand,  I have never heard "pure" sciences been discussed in these programs. No geology, no evolution, no chemistry, no genetics or cosmology. I hope the perception is not there that only advice about health which audiences find useful in their daily lives should be covered. Or that, there is no interest in India in listening to someone ramble about the earth's tectonic plates or whether humans interbred with the Neanderthals or some arcane topic about the cosmos.

The trick to hook audiences may be to begin with events of national interest wherein knowledge of certain scientific super-specialization has been called upon to weigh in favor of or against the implementation of big projects and policy decisions. The programs could be in English or Hindi or a regional language. Here is my list:

1) Biotechnology and Indian agriculture
2) Nuclear, Solar and Wind Power
3) Groundwater and Indian agriculture
4) Designing New Remote Sensing Senors For Ecological and Mineral Mapping
5) Interlinking of Himalayan and Peninsular Rivers

Make no mistake. Fundamental principles of biology, geology, physics and chemistry will be put to use to tackle the above listed problems. These already have been given considerable attention in the mainstream media and are in the public eye. Often though, the science involved is not written about in articles or discussed on television. A more leisurely radio program might just be the most convenient medium for explaining the basic science and weaving a story about discoveries with the practical applications of these fields. And scientists coming out and speaking frankly about their work in these fields will get citizens interested and involved in a more open and informed debate about controversial projects.

..one final request. These radio stations must have a website and a downloadable podcast of every program. I have a feeling that many people in India too will find listening on a mobile device the best way to catch up with science stories.

what will life be without little dreams.. :)