Cracking a global challenge! Our country's research team has achieved a major breakthrough in the large-scale utilization of "flammable ice" domain.

Recently, the innovative team of Hainan University on marine clean energy successfully solved a long-standing global challenge in the field of methane direct catalytic conversion, achieving a groundbreaking breakthrough. The new catalytic system developed by the team can efficiently convert gaseous methane into high-value liquid fuel methanol with close to 100% perfect selectivity under mild conditions, providing a core technology solution with independent intellectual property rights for the in-situ conversion and efficient utilization of the abundant natural gas hydrate resources in the South China Sea. The related research results were recently published in the international academic journal "Nature Communications". It is reported that this breakthrough technology achieves two major innovations: first, according to the final experimental results, the selectivity of methanol is as high as 99.7%, almost achieving a "zero loss" perfect conversion; second, the entire process only requires a low temperature of 70C, which means that future industrial production will be safer, more energy-efficient, and more environmentally friendly, with high potential for commercial application and economic value. Methane gas hydrates extracted from the depths of the South China Sea are expected to be efficiently and low-cost converted into clean methanol fuel locally in Hainan, greatly enhancing China's energy security capabilities.