Natural Gas Now and in the Future by Sarah Klass '07

Natural Gas is one of the most used forms of energy and fuel in the world today. It is relatively new compared to other fuel sources but natural gas has been around for some time and is now prominent in the issue of cleaning up the environment because of its cleanliness.

Natural gas is made up mostly of methane, butane, propane, carbon dioxide, and ethane. Currently, natural gas is used as a fuel after serious refining that takes out almost every gas except methane.

It is looked poorly upon now because methane is highly explosive and fire is very scary. In the wake of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, many natural gas lines were damaged or destroyed which caused the use of natural gas to decline and the price per gallon to rise. Scientists and car manufacturers have begun using natural gas as an alternative to gasoline as a car fuel. Now, you can see signs on many buses and modes of public transportation that they use natural gas instead of gasoline to run their machines. In the future, natural gas will continue to be used as a substitute for gasoline and diesel. Manufacturing hydrogen out of natural gas is the next step; hydrogen is even cleaner than natural gas in cars, creating only water as an exhaust.

The manufacture of airplane fuel is also in the future for natural gas. Engineers are working on a plane that fuels up with natural gas.

The natural gas sources are not going to last forever, so scientists have been looking for other ways to get methane, the chief component of natural gas by looking into landfill gas, methane hydrants, and biogas. Although natural gas is not insanely popular right now, its future is looking bright. It is effective and convenient as a fuel alternative to gasoline and diesel and scientists are continuing their research on the chemical to find ways to make it very effective.