The Laboratory of Advanced Materials, belonging to the University of Alicante's department of Inorganic Chemistry, has developed a technology that allows the preparation of artificial methane hydrates. The research has been published by the prestigious scientific journal ("Methane hydrate formation in confined nanospace can surpass nature"). Research has been led by Joaquín Silvestre Albero, Francisco Rodríguez Reinoso and Manuel Martínez Escandell, and carried out by Mirian E. Casco, who is currently completing an internship at the University of Alicante. These researchers have proven it is possible to prepare methane hydrates in a laboratory by imitating, and even enhancing, natural processes through the use of activated carbon materials as nano-reactors. One of the keys of this research was that scientists were able to reduce the process to form methane hydrates, which takes a long time in nature, to just a few minutes, thus making its technological applicability much easier. The University of Alicante has been working on the design and synthesis of highly-performing activated carbon for over 30 years. In the words of Joaquín Silvestre, head researcher, "these materials show a great potential to not only eliminate polluting molecules in the air and in industrial waterways, but also to be used as gas storage systems". 
Manuel Martínez Escandell, Francisco Rodríguez Reinoso and Joaquín Silvestre Albero. These results are a step forward to understanding the artificial synthesis process of these natural structures, and a new pathway into the use of fuels such as natural gas for transport (instead of petrol and diesel), or for long-distance transport of natural gas (e.g. as opposed to current transport conditions, where gas is liquefied at -162ºC, since this new technique allows for gas to be transported at a temperature that is much closer to room temperature). "Our results show that some of our coals can supply amounts as high as 300 methane volumes stored at 100 atmospheres for each volume unit of wet coal", researchers say. Silvestre explains that this research has taken advantage of the so-called "confinement" effect to artificially synthesize methane hydrates inside the coal's cavities or pores. "Methane hydrates have been prepared on activated carbon materials that were previously wetted under gentler pressure and temperature conditions (30 atmospheres and 2ºC) than in a natural environment". Once the synthesis and analysis had been carried out at the University of Alicante's laboratories, the study went on to its final stage in Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxford (United Kingdom), where neutron scattering was performed, and in ALBA synchrotron in Barcelona (Spain). "These studies are the first experimental evidence that it is possible to form methane hydrates in a confined space, with a nature-like stoichiometry and significantly higher kinetics". Other members of LMA international group are Japanese lecturer Katsumi Kaneko, who is collaborating in the development of CONCERT project on the subject matter of this study, and Fernando Rey, from the Instituto de Tecnología Química of Valencia (ITQ-CSIC), who collaborated in the measurements taken in ALBA and Oxford accelerators. Researcher Timmy Ramirez, now a member of US Oak Ridge National Laboratory and former researcher in chief of Oxford's neutron accelerator, has also participated in this research. Scientific background Gas hydrates (also known as clathrates) are crystalline structures similar to a cage, where a group of molecules surrounds a central molecule of a certain nature. When said cage is made up of water molecules and there is a methane molecule inside the cavity, what we call methane hydrates are formed. Methane hydrates are formed in nature under very specific physical, chemical and geological conditions that can only be found in the bottom of the oceans, or, less frequently, in the subsoil of cold regions such as Siberia, which is known as permafrost. The origin of methane causing these marine hydrates is in the thermal, microbial and bacterial decomposition of organic matter that is dragged by river currents for millions of years. As a consequence, methane hydrates reserves are located in continental slopes, near the shore, approximately 300-500 m underground, where enough organic matter is accumulated and there is the right combination of pressure and temperature. Methane hydrates are the Earth's largest natural gas reserve. They are located near the continental area, and according to the calculations their reserves are double those of all fossil fuels (oil, natural gas and coal) that currently exist on Planet Earth. According to experts, there are 5,000 gigatons of methane, which is approximately 500 times the amount of carbon that is emitted every year from burning coal, oil and natural gas. In 2013, the first exploration to extract methane by de pressurising marine deposits was carried out in Japan. This technology is expected to be available in 2018. The hydrate's formula is (CH4)4(H2O)23, or one mol of methane per 5.75 mols of water, corresponding to 13.4% of methane weight (one cubic metre of hydrate releases 180 cubic metres of methane, the main component of natural gas). The hydrates' high energy density and their stability when temperatures are higher than liquid natural gas (-2ºC vs -162ºC) mean that methane hydrates can be a future solution for long-distance transport of methane in large quantities, as long as they can be synthetically prepared by imitating nature within a reasonably short period of time (in just a few minutes)
Manuel Martínez Escandell, Francisco Rodríguez Reinoso and Joaquín Silvestre Albero. These results are a step forward to understanding the artificial synthesis process of these natural structures, and a new pathway into the use of fuels such as natural gas for transport (instead of petrol and diesel), or for long-distance transport of natural gas (e.g. as opposed to current transport conditions, where gas is liquefied at -162ºC, since this new technique allows for gas to be transported at a temperature that is much closer to room temperature). "Our results show that some of our coals can supply amounts as high as 300 methane volumes stored at 100 atmospheres for each volume unit of wet coal", researchers say. Silvestre explains that this research has taken advantage of the so-called "confinement" effect to artificially synthesize methane hydrates inside the coal's cavities or pores. "Methane hydrates have been prepared on activated carbon materials that were previously wetted under gentler pressure and temperature conditions (30 atmospheres and 2ºC) than in a natural environment". Once the synthesis and analysis had been carried out at the University of Alicante's laboratories, the study went on to its final stage in Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxford (United Kingdom), where neutron scattering was performed, and in ALBA synchrotron in Barcelona (Spain). "These studies are the first experimental evidence that it is possible to form methane hydrates in a confined space, with a nature-like stoichiometry and significantly higher kinetics". Other members of LMA international group are Japanese lecturer Katsumi Kaneko, who is collaborating in the development of CONCERT project on the subject matter of this study, and Fernando Rey, from the Instituto de Tecnología Química of Valencia (ITQ-CSIC), who collaborated in the measurements taken in ALBA and Oxford accelerators. Researcher Timmy Ramirez, now a member of US Oak Ridge National Laboratory and former researcher in chief of Oxford's neutron accelerator, has also participated in this research. Scientific background Gas hydrates (also known as clathrates) are crystalline structures similar to a cage, where a group of molecules surrounds a central molecule of a certain nature. When said cage is made up of water molecules and there is a methane molecule inside the cavity, what we call methane hydrates are formed. Methane hydrates are formed in nature under very specific physical, chemical and geological conditions that can only be found in the bottom of the oceans, or, less frequently, in the subsoil of cold regions such as Siberia, which is known as permafrost. The origin of methane causing these marine hydrates is in the thermal, microbial and bacterial decomposition of organic matter that is dragged by river currents for millions of years. As a consequence, methane hydrates reserves are located in continental slopes, near the shore, approximately 300-500 m underground, where enough organic matter is accumulated and there is the right combination of pressure and temperature. Methane hydrates are the Earth's largest natural gas reserve. They are located near the continental area, and according to the calculations their reserves are double those of all fossil fuels (oil, natural gas and coal) that currently exist on Planet Earth. According to experts, there are 5,000 gigatons of methane, which is approximately 500 times the amount of carbon that is emitted every year from burning coal, oil and natural gas. In 2013, the first exploration to extract methane by de pressurising marine deposits was carried out in Japan. This technology is expected to be available in 2018. The hydrate's formula is (CH4)4(H2O)23, or one mol of methane per 5.75 mols of water, corresponding to 13.4% of methane weight (one cubic metre of hydrate releases 180 cubic metres of methane, the main component of natural gas). The hydrates' high energy density and their stability when temperatures are higher than liquid natural gas (-2ºC vs -162ºC) mean that methane hydrates can be a future solution for long-distance transport of methane in large quantities, as long as they can be synthetically prepared by imitating nature within a reasonably short period of time (in just a few minutes)
In the researchers' new system, a returning beam of light is mixed with a locally stored beam, and the correlation of their phase, or period of oscillation, helps remove noise caused by interactions with the environment. (Illustration: Jose-Luis Olivares/MIT) Phased in Entanglement means that the physical state of one particle constrains the possible states of another. Electrons, for instance, have a property called spin, which describes their magnetic orientation. If two electrons are orbiting an atom’s nucleus at the same distance, they must have opposite spins. This spin entanglement can persist even if the electrons leave the atom’s orbit, but interactions with the environment break it down quickly. In the MIT researchers’ system, two beams of light are entangled, and one of them is stored locally — racing through an optical fiber — while the other is projected into the environment. When light from the projected beam — the “probe” — is reflected back, it carries information about the objects it has encountered. But this light is also corrupted by the environmental influences that engineers call “noise.” Recombining it with the locally stored beam helps suppress the noise, recovering the information. The local beam is useful for noise suppression because its phase is correlated with that of the probe. If you think of light as a wave, with regular crests and troughs, two beams are in phase if their crests and troughs coincide. If the crests of one are aligned with the troughs of the other, their phases are anti-correlated. But light can also be thought of as consisting of particles, or photons. And at the particle level, phase is a murkier concept. “Classically, you can prepare beams that are completely opposite in phase, but this is only a valid concept on average,” says Zheshen Zhang, a postdoc in the Optical and Quantum Communications Group and first author on the new paper. “On average, they’re opposite in phase, but quantum mechanics does not allow you to precisely measure the phase of each individual photon.” Improving the odds Instead, quantum mechanics interprets phase statistically. Given particular measurements of two photons, from two separate beams of light, there’s some probability that the phases of the beams are correlated. The more photons you measure, the greater your certainty that the beams are either correlated or not. With entangled beams, that certainty increases much more rapidly than it does with classical beams. When a probe beam interacts with the environment, the noise it accumulates also increases the uncertainty of the ensuing phase measurements. But that’s as true of classical beams as it is of entangled beams. Because entangled beams start out with stronger correlations, even when noise causes them to fall back within classical limits, they still fare better than classical beams do under the same circumstances. “Going out to the target and reflecting and then coming back from the target attenuates the correlation between the probe and the reference beam by the same factor, regardless of whether you started out at the quantum limit or started out at the classical limit,” Shapiro says. “If you started with the quantum case that’s so many times bigger than the classical case, that relative advantage stays the same, even as both beams become classical due to the loss and the noise.” In experiments that compared optical systems that used entangled light and classical light, the researchers found that the entangled-light systems increased the signal-to-noise ratio — a measure of how much information can be recaptured from the reflected probe — by 20 percent. That accorded very well with their theoretical predictions. But the theory also predicts that improvements in the quality of the optical equipment used in the experiment could double or perhaps even quadruple the signal-to-noise ratio. Since detection error declines exponentially with the signal-to-noise ratio, that could translate to a million-fold increase in sensitivity. “This is a breakthrough,” says Stefano Pirandola, an associate professor of computer science at the University of York in England. “One of the main technical challenges was the experimental realization of a practical receiver for quantum illumination. Shapiro and Wong experimentally implemented a quantum receiver, which is not optimal but is still able to prove the quantum illumination advantage. In particular, they were able to overcome the major problem associated with the loss in the optical storage of the idler beam.” “This research can potentially lead to the development of a quantum LIDAR which is able to spot almost-invisible objects in a very noisy background,” he adds. “The working mechanism of quantum illumination could in fact be exploited at short-distances as well, for instance to develop non-invasive techniques of quantum sensing with potential applications in biomedicine.”