EPA starts methane project in China’s mines

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency plans to invest more than $1 million in three projects to capture methane gas from Chinese mines.

The researchers plan to first determine the amount of methane emitted, evaluate different capture methods, assess end uses for the gas, and estimate the potential cost and profits from methane capture.

The EPA estimates the program could recover enough methane to be equivalent to 1.8 million metric tons of carbon dioxide.

“By capturing and utilizing what would otherwise be wasted methane emissions, a new source of clean, reliable, valuable energy is realized," EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson said in a release.

The EPA plans the methane projects at the Liuzhuang Mine in Anhui Province, a group of six mines in the Songzao coal basin in Chongqing, and a group of six mines in the Hebi region of Henan Province.

Coal-mining causes methane to escape into the atmosphere, and the EPA says the gas is 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide emissions. But methane can be an important energy source as the primary constituent of natural gas.

Ventilation air methane, or VAM, constitutes 60 percent to 70 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions from underground coal mines, according to Montreal-based Biothermica Technologies, which in April received U.S. government approval to begin a coal mine methane mitigation project (see Biothermica to test methane mitigation in Alabama). Biothermica says VAM emissions made up 5 percent of all man-made greenhouse gas emissions in 2007.

The U.S. and China are collaborating on several projects to reduce emissions from methane: Methane to Markets, the EPA's Coalbed Methane Outreach Program, the China Coalbed Methane Clearinghouse, the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate, and the U.S.-China Strategic Economic Dialogue.

Many private companies are also tackling methane capture from coal mines.

In March, Paris-based Eco-Carbone, which specializes in carbon offset strategies, secured a €2.1 million first round of financing from Truffle Capital. The company is a consultant to coal mines on the recuperation of methane emissions and their transformation into energy (see Solar power wheeling and dealing).

In July, Devco launched a $300,000, three-year project in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, to use shuttered coal mines to grow switchgrass and to test large-scale coal-bed methane projects (see From coal mines to switchgrass).

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