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May 14, 2007
Capturing methane from dams for energy production
Scientists in Brazil have claimed that a major source of greenhouse gas emissions could be curbed by capturing and burning methane given off by large hydro-electric dams.The team at the country's National Space Research Institute (INPE) is developing prototype equipment designed to stop the greenhouse gas from entering the atmosphere.
The technology will extract the methane from the water to supplement the energy produced by the dam turbines.
The scientists estimate that worldwide the technique could prevent emissions equivalent to more than the total annual burning of fossil fuels in the UK - and reduce the pressure to build new dams in sensitive areas such as the Amazon.
When people tell you they can remove an entire country's worth of CO2 emissions, you have to take notice. When they tell you that they can do it and increase the amount of green power you generate at the same time, it's just down right exciting!
For those of you that don't know, organic matter is swept down rivers as a natural course of things. When a dam is put up, that organic matter tends to settle in the water storage basin of the dam. The problem comes from the fact that organic matter decaying on the floor of a basin like that in the absence of oxygen forms methane, which gets released when the water rich with the methane is sent through the dam.
As we all recall Methane is an extremely bad green house gas, 23 times worse than CO2. So every methane source we kill is exponentially better for the environment, besides methane is usable as a fuel for power generation, so we really shouldn't be wasting it anyway, which is what this Brazilian project sets out to do. They want to take the methane off the floor of their riverbeds leading up to their dams and use it to generate extra electricity while decreasing green house gases.
I know what you're thinking...burning methane is going to make CO2, but it's CO2 that came from plants that breathed it in, so it closes the carbon loop. And actually the amount of time it takes for it to generate methane, it's probably CO2 from years ago, so it's even better. And when it offsets non-renewable energy as well, we all end up being winners.
It's a great innovation. It appears we will find ourselves once again looking overseas for technology to help us with our own green house gas problems in a few years. Too bad we couldn't be leading this kind of research.
[via Autobloggreen]
Read more over at BBC and TreeHugger.
Posted by Jamison at May 14, 2007 1:32 PM
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