Natural gas is an abundant source of energy. It is a non renewable, methane based gas. It’s quite often found near petroleum deposits. The majority is believed to have been created by the decomposition of tiny sea creatures and plants around 200 million years ago. It’s continually being generated in marshes and landfills. The Ancient Chinese discovered its use about 2,500 years ago where burning it under pans of seawater helped evaporation to get the salt. Until recently even the natural gas found in coal beds was considered a hazard, it’s now a valued commodity.
Technology has allowed the gas produced in landfills to be piped in residential areas for heating and cooking. The largest gas fields are found in Siberia and the Middle East. Where most is eventually piped into Europe, the largest gas consumers.
With global warming and air quality causing such concern around the world there has been a renewed interest in collecting and harnessing this relatively clean burning gas. It has smaller amounts of the harmful substances like sulphur dioxide and nitrous oxides once burned. Currently around 23 % or 2nd after petrol, of energy consumed is derived from natural gas. On extraction the gas contains many impurities these must be removed. Some of these are propane’s, water vapour and carbon dioxide. Because pure methane is odourless and colourless it’s barely detectable. These are dangerous qualities for a combustible gas, so an odorant is added called mercaptan during the final processing stage. This gives it the distinctive rotten cabbage smell.
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