TABLE OF CONTENTS Natural gas is used primarily as a fuel and as a raw material in manufacturing. It is used in home furnaces, water heaters, and cooking stoves. As an industrial fuel, it is used in brick, cement, and ceramic-tile kilns; in glass making; for generating steam in water boilers; and as a clean heat source for sterilizing instruments and processing foods. As a raw material in petrochemical manufacturing, natural gas is used to produce hydrogen, sulfur, carbon black, and ammonia. The ammonia is used in a range of fertilizers and as a secondary feedstock for manufacturing other chemicals, including nitric acid and urea. Ethylene, an important petrochemical, is also produced from natural gas.
Natural gas is considered as an environmentally friendly clean fuel, offering important environmental benefits when compared to other fossil fuels. The superior environmental qualities over coal or crude oil are that emissions of sulfur dioxide are negligible or that the levels of nitrous oxide and carbon dioxide emissions are lower. This helps to reduce problems of acid rain, ozone layer, or greenhouse gases. Natural gas is also a very safe source of energy when transported, stored, and used.
This chapter covers, the essential technical points of natural gas. The objectives of the chapter are to give the reader an introduction to natural gas by describing the origin and composition of natural gas, gas sources, phase behavior and properties, and transportation methods.
The discovery of natural gas dates from ancient times in the...
