tmorr37
01-06-2008, 10:07 AM
China and India Exploit Icy Energy Reserves
ARTICLE LINK (http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0%2C1518%2C523178%2C00.html)
By Gerald Traufetter
China and India have reported massive finds of frozen methane gas off their coasts, which they hope will satisfy their energy needs. But environmentalists fear that tapping these resources could have adverse effects on the world climate.
"The carbon dioxide could be obtained from the exhaust gases of coal power plants, for instance," says Klaus Wallmann, the direct of a research project known as SUGAR, which was recently formed to study the issue. What he proposes sounds almost too good to be true: producing fuel while sequestering greenhouse gas deep beneath the ocean floor -- eliminating energy bottlenecks while simultaneously putting the brakes on global warming.
Wallmann and his colleagues base their theories on a reaction scientists noticed more than a decade ago. When a certain amount of pressure is applied to the cage-like crystal structure, carbon dioxide can penetrate the layer of ice, at which point it displaces the methane. Then a new cage of frozen water molecules forms around the carbon dioxide. "This behavior has already been demonstrated in laboratory experiments," says Wallmann
Here we go messing with mother nature. So they're going to pump CO2 into the ice. Lets hope that some event in the future doesn't release all the CO2 at once.
Man knows very little about the world he lives in. How about a massive earth quake shifting huge amounts of land to warmer waters. Tmorr37
ARTICLE LINK (http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0%2C1518%2C523178%2C00.html)
By Gerald Traufetter
China and India have reported massive finds of frozen methane gas off their coasts, which they hope will satisfy their energy needs. But environmentalists fear that tapping these resources could have adverse effects on the world climate.
"The carbon dioxide could be obtained from the exhaust gases of coal power plants, for instance," says Klaus Wallmann, the direct of a research project known as SUGAR, which was recently formed to study the issue. What he proposes sounds almost too good to be true: producing fuel while sequestering greenhouse gas deep beneath the ocean floor -- eliminating energy bottlenecks while simultaneously putting the brakes on global warming.
Wallmann and his colleagues base their theories on a reaction scientists noticed more than a decade ago. When a certain amount of pressure is applied to the cage-like crystal structure, carbon dioxide can penetrate the layer of ice, at which point it displaces the methane. Then a new cage of frozen water molecules forms around the carbon dioxide. "This behavior has already been demonstrated in laboratory experiments," says Wallmann
Here we go messing with mother nature. So they're going to pump CO2 into the ice. Lets hope that some event in the future doesn't release all the CO2 at once.
Man knows very little about the world he lives in. How about a massive earth quake shifting huge amounts of land to warmer waters. Tmorr37