Lake Kivu: Making the Most of a Deadly SituationThere are a lot of ways a volcano can kill you. Expl

Lake Kivu: Making the Most of a Deadly SituationThere are a lot of ways a volcano can kill you. Explosions, pyroclastic flows, ash that disrupts climate and growing patterns….and if you needed to add another to the list: exploding lakes. It sounds pretty dire, but some brilliant people with a knack for finding silver linings have come up with a way to turn one of these killers—exploding lakes—into an energy source. Lakes that sit near volcanoes can become saturated with carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide collects at the bottom of the lake, and with the right trigger, is suddenly released in a dense cloud, asphyxiating most life in its path. Two of the most infamous of these eruptions both occurred in Cameroon just two years apart—Lake Monoun in 1984 and Lake Nyos in 1986(http://on.fb.me/17hOLeB).These “limnic eruptions” were very mysterious at first—they were killers that hardly left a trace. Once scientists figured out what was going on, they realized exploding lakes could be quelled by releasing the carbon dioxide slowly (via pipes) instead of letting it build up.Enter some scientists who realized they could make the most of an unfortunate situation. There is another African lake that is very saturated with gas and shows signs of prehistoric eruptions—Lake Kivu on the border of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda. Lake Kivu is much larger than both Lake Monoun and Lake Nyos, and it is believed to hold much more gas—except most of this gas is not carbon dioxide, it is methane. Methane is an energy source. Methane can fuel power plants. Methane can provide electricity to the millions of people who live around the banks of Lake Kivu.The Rwandan government decided to take advantage of this. Working with the energy firm, Contour Global, the aptly named project KivuWatt began constructing power plants that made use of the methane trapped in the lake. . The gas is puled out of the lake for safety reasons, but rather than just being released, it is burned in a power plant as a fuel source. The first phase of the project came online a few years ago and operates a power plant that generates 26 megawatts of electricity, more than 10% of the installed electricity capacity in Rwanda. There are plans to continue expanding the facility to bring the generation capacity up to 100 megawatts, which would represent ¼ of Rwanda’s electricity generation if completed.-CMFor more information: http://bbc.in/1zMEH83http://bit.ly/170FG9Ohttp://bit.ly/1vFo5zoPhoto credit: The Advocacy Projecthttp://bit.ly/1vNtkgx -- source link

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