March 03, 2003

Cheap Lake Methane for Rwanda?

New Scientist

Very interesting article about a new power source for the heavily logged Rwanda. Apparently a Lake Kivu has large amounts of dissolved gases in it - one of them being methane. The plan they have for extracting the gas is actually quite clever, involving a long pipe going into the deep water and then using the natural gas expansion near the surface to bring out the methane. Just redissolve unwanted gases into fresh water and you're left with 85% methane.

Also interesting, another lake in the region, Lake Nyos, killed about 1000 people when it released a huge carbon dioxide cloud back in 1986 and suffocated them all!

Posted by answerguru at March 3, 2003 06:22 PM
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