Tuesday, July 15, 2008

More microwave tech

With the price of oil as high as it is, alternative fossil fuels are becoming more attractive. Methane hydrates are hard to harvest because they are temperature and pressure dependent, if they become unstable a whole deposit can gasify, and explode. This makes harvesting methane clathrates very risky. However, if you could control the rate of heating then it is possible to slowly harvest the methane. Yes I seem to have a thing for microwaves, but they have interesting properties. Like that microwaves will heat the ice slower than the surrounding water allowing the methane to be released in a controlled fashion. The hydrates would have to be harvested from the edges, but using microwaves the massive untapped methane deposits in the ocean could be extracted with minimal impact to the sealife.

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