Abstract: Gas hydrates, or clathrates, are polyhedral shaped crystalline structures which certain gases, mainly light alkanes, form with water under moderately low temperature (of a few centigrades) and high pressure (of about 3 megapascals) conditions. When heated to near-room temperatures or when the pressure upon them is released, they yield the two ingredient components, which one of them is the natural gas.
Gas hydrates are found in nature at the depths of seas exceeding 300 metres, mixed with bottom sediments or under the arctic permafrost layer. It is estimated that most of the methane content of the earth is in the form of gas hydrates just beneath the sea floor, which one of them is the Black Sea. However, the high hydrostatic pressure levels at those depths pose a challenge for the marine technologists who want to exploit this new opportunity. The paper to be presented has a proposal for an extraction scheme for the gas hydrates in the depths of the seas.
Another aspect of gas hydrates is that they offer a fourth alternative for the transportation of gas hydrates, in addition to the existing means (pipelines, liquefied natural gas (LNG) and compressed natural gas(CNG)). By this way, it is possible to avoid the high pressures of the CNG and cyrogenically low temperatures of the LNG concepts. A unitized cargo transportation scheme derived from the lighter aboard ship (LASH) concept for the transportation and storage of natural gas in gas hydrate form is presented and candidate ship forms for that concept are presented.

Brief Biography of the Speaker:
Deniz Unsalan was born in Izmir, Turkey in 1953. He was educated in Ankara and Istanbul, receiving his undergraduate education from the Turkish Naval Academy in 1973. He served in the Turkish Navy ships before and after his postgraduate education. He received "Master of Science" and "Mechanical Engineer" degrees from the Naval Postrgraduate School at Monterey, California in 1980. He was a British Council Scholar at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, U.K. between 1982-1984. He received his Doctor of Philosophy degree in Naval Architecture in 1993 from the Istanbul Technical University.
He was a lecturer in Marine Engineering at the Turkish Naval Academy between 1987 and 1994, Assistant Professor at Istanbul Technical University Maritime Faculty between 1994 and 1996, Associate Professor at Near East University in Cyprus between 1996-2003, at Dokuz Eylul University Institute of Marine Sciences and Technology between 2003-2006. He became a full Professor in 2006. He will start his new post as the Professor of Marine engineering at the Piri Reis University in Istanbul, Turkey on September 2009.