posted
Aug 19, 2010 by News Hunter
In Swahili, the word, or the wind of evil refers to the bags of deadly, odorless gas that seeps from the lake, killing everything that comes his way. Sometimes, some escapes. Eight feet below the surface of Lake Kivu, which covers an area of 1,000 square kilometers on a natural border between Rwanda and Congo, about 250 cubic km of carbon dioxide underground, with another 65 kilometers of methane blocks. Residents living along the shores of Lake Kivu in Central Africa have always appreciated and feared their power.
A pilot project by the State of Kibuye Power is the extraction of methane from the lake and lead to a shore facility to be converted to electricity. Yesterday, the East Africa correspondent Xan Rice wrote about the efforts of Rwanda to exploit part of the lethal potential for clean energy. Rice wrote. Currently, less than 4 mW Kibuye is the production of gas from Lake Kivu, but has an eye on it some increase in capacity of 50 MW in the coming years.
Within two years, the government still hopes to be third of its power from Lake Kivu, is ultimately aimed at producing energy from natural gas for export to neighboring countries. "Our grandparents knew there was gas in the lake, but now we have shown that it can be exploited," said Alexis Kabuto, Rwandan engineer managing the project of $ 20 million in Kibuye. "It is a source of cheap, clean energy that could last 100 years.."
Releasing the pressure causes an effect of tsunamis in the lake and the waves complete sweep of carbon dioxide from the coast emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in lethal quantities. limnic eruptions occur in lakes located in volcanic regions, where some disturbance of an earthquake or torrential rains sent even the lakes deep gas to the surface. The threat of Kivu gas reserves is serious, thanks to a geological phenomenon, as horrible as it is fascinating, called limnic eruption. Cameroon is home to the only two other lakes that have failed to exploit, develop, one in 1984 and one in 1986. The second event, at Lake Nyos, released carbon dioxide, nearly 2,000 people suffocated.
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