Why Not Burn Off Methane Gas?

Yes, methane gas, naturally vented, does harm the atmoshere (yes, 86 times as damaging is much worse than 4 times...)

...but, that is if all that methane gas is not burned off...

If it were, it would be subject to some 20+ chemical reaction equations that would then result in more CH₂, O₂, H₂, etc., and more H₂0...

And that is not so bad as it all staying as CH₄...

Hey some good news...

..."Scientist John Worden of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and colleagues focused on fires because they're also changing globally. The area burned each year decreased about 12 percent between the early 2000s and the more recent period of 2007 to 2014, according to a new study using observations by NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer satellite instrument. The logical assumption would be that methane emissions from fires have decreased by about the same percentage. Using satellite measurements of methane and carbon monoxide, Worden's team found the real decrease in methane emissions was almost twice as much as that assumption would suggest.

When the research team subtracted this large decrease from the sum of all emissions, the methane budget balanced correctly, with room for both fossil fuel and wetland increases. The research is published in the journal Nature Communications."...

https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2668/nasa-led-study-solves-a-methane-puzzle/

You should also notice from SolarEagle's reply that capturing methane gas for burning from the wide variety of sources would be difficult.

When it comes to the wetlands, the devil is in the details. I just read a couple of more recent discoveries - it seems the increased emissions are actually from new carbon in thawed bogs, but the increase in peat formation in those bogs still makes them a net carbon sink.

https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate3328

The older stores of carbon in the arctic are being released when well drained land thaws, but not as expected, from thermokarst bogs (wetlands produced by collapse of thawing permafrost).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.soilbio.2017.12.010

Wet bogs also lock in the N stores, instead of spewing Nitrous oxide( with 300X greenhouse effect of CO2). Yes there's quite a store of Nitrogen in the arctic.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5474798/

So it's the dryer land of the thawing lot that has most potential to release greenhouse gases.

We already burn off Methane in the Millions of Cubic Meters.

We also produce it from natural reservoirs and capture it from sources like rubbish facilities.

Not sure which other Methane you want to burn.

Did you mean to set a pilot-flame to the back site of cows?

Whats the weight having to do with anything?

...."A farmer in the town of Rasdorf, Germany got a stinky shock when the methane gas produced by his 90 dairy cows blew the roof off his farm shed. The fart attack was caused by built up flatulence in the shed that were eventually ignited by a spark of static electricity. While there’s damage to the building, just one of the cows was injured with only slight burns."...

The earliest homes that humans inhabited were likely naturally occurring features such as caves. Seo In Dubai

There have recently appeared a couple of reports of fires in milking barns, due to methane accummulation...

So, if there happened to be a concerned dairy farmer that would want to take preventative measures rather than pay greatier fire insurance premiums, then, when all the cows were typically brought in to the milking barn, and it had a typically high ceiling, then most of the resultant methane therein would tend to rise to the ceiling-high-point, at which point, a small, short, vertical, capped chimney could be located, which, in turn, be equipped with a remotely activatable pilot light, in order to burn-off the daily CH4 accummulation, as needed...

Yeah, I am sure the insurance will pay for this. I neat Methane collection and ignition system. Trigger will be at the insurance desk.

Venting of the Methane is the better and safer solution instead.

If you allow any buildup and already pre-install the ignition source the catastrophe is pre-programmed.

Just have to wait for the bang.

To clarify, those reports are accessible by searching on ( methane+fire+barn )

Pilot on a cow?

Elton John's "candle in the wind" comes to mind.

Interesting read about methane clathrates:

https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/methane-hydrates-and-contemporary-climate-change-24314790

"Catastrophic, widespread dissociation of methane gas hydrates will not be triggered by continued climate warming at contemporary rates (0.2ºC per decade; IPCC 2007) over timescales of a few hundred years. Most of Earth's gas hydrates occur at low saturations and in sediments at such great depths below the seafloor or onshore permafrost that they will barely be affected by warming over even 10³ yr. Even when CH4 is liberated from gas hydrates, oxidative and physical processes may greatly reduce the amount that reaches the atmosphere as CH4. The CO2 produced by oxidation of CH4 released from dissociating gas hydrates will likely have a greater impact on the Earth system (e.g., on ocean chemistry and atmospheric CO2 concentrations; Archer et al. 2009) than will the CH4 that remains after passing through various sinks."

Only about 1% of methane clathrates are in arctic permafrost context. The others appear to be relatively stable where they are in the ocean so no rush to burn em.

The practicality of capturing bovine flatulence in sufficient quantity to make a difference is beyond current technology.

This discussion is a real gas!

Here's an idea.

LynDoor™Industries Bossy Bag.

I hope LynDoor has something in the works for nitrous oxide capture too... we don't want to die laughing (or do we? )

stop eating steaks and may be consider chew "off-topics" just saying

Methane can be burnt for obtaining electricity, power garbage truck, and heat buildings. Capturing it before it harms the atmosphere also helps in cutting off the effects of climate change. And surely, methane doesn’t live as long as CO2. Through methane half as heavy as air, it has a shorter lifespan and all the methane gas don’t get burnt off easily. So your answer is here. But you can get benefit from benefit from Renewable Energy .

Burn it off?? Much better to use it in fuel cells to generate electric power.

No pollution.

A good few years ago now I worked on a project where a company called JDC were going to drill for methane hydrates offshore Japan. I left that particular company and didn't keep an eye on how successful it was. I believe after the tsunami destroyed one of their nuclear reactors they were seriously worried about their future energy sources and methane hydrates were seen as the way forward.

http://www.jdc.co.jp/en/business/drt/develop1.php

Has anyone calculated the methane produced by 8 billion humans?

All mammals,reptiles,even fish produce methane.

Has this been taken into account?

Turkmenistan president wants to close the Gates of Hell. If they succeed by diverting the methane into a capture system for revenue, I have no problem with that. If they instead only extinguish the flames then so many other problems can happen with this large gas leak.