How deep-sea worms help keep natural gases on ice

An example of a feather duster worm. Credit: Rich Carey.
It is well known that natural gas liquefaction on the ocean floor is one of the greatest sources of energy on the planet. It is possible that the huge amounts of natural gas that are so confined remain safely locked in cages, or that they are liberated into the ocean and released into the atmosphere.

The NYU Tandon School of Engineering discovered that feather duster worms and Archaea consume methane enclathrated and locked into a structure.

The investigators, led by Ryan Hartman, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at NYU Tandon, sought to examine the influence that subtle temperature fluctuations may have on the dynamic stability of the hydrate deposits.

The study "Microbe-Worm Symbiosis Stabilizes Methane Hydrates in Deep Marine Environments" was published in Energy & Fuels. They looked at the dissociation rate and found that methane is stable at depths where the crystals are exposed to.

The implications are profound, as vast quantities of methane (200 to 500 gigatons of CH4), which form spontaneously from water and small hydrophobic molecule under specific temperature and pressure conditions, are stored as in the ocean worldwide.

Hartman said that their discovery shows the extent of symbiosis between the microbes that consume methane and generate heat and the feather duster worms that consume them. In the absence of the worms or an abnormal imbalance in their populations, these microbes could generate enough heat to melt the hydrates. The worms eat the most heat-causing germs.

The team combined historical ocean temperature records and gas hydrate inventory estimates with their model to examine how warming oceans could disrupt this fragile balance. The suppression on the growth rate of methanotroph could be weakened if the worm population is decreased.

An increase in the methanogenic microbial activity would make the system more endothermic and strengthen the tolerance to temperature fluctuations close to the methane hydrate phase boundary.

Slowing the retreat of this biological dynamic into deeper waters could help delay or prevent the massive release of greenhouse gas into the sea. Whether gasses recrystallize or make it to the ocean's surface is a much debated and important research topic.

Microbe-Worm Symbiosis Stabilizes Methane Hydrates in Deep Marine Environments, Energy & Fuels is a paper written by the authors. There is a book called Energy Fuels.

How deep-sea worms help keep natural gases on ice was retrieved fromphys.org on January 13, 2022.

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