Lakes store huge amounts of methane. In a new study, environmental scientists at the University of Basel offer suggestions for how it can be extracted and used as an energy source in the form of methanol.
Lakes store huge amounts of methane. In a new study, environmental scientists at the University of Basel offer suggestions for how it can be extracted and used as an energy source in the form of methanol.
Discussion about the current climate crisis usually focuses on carbon dioxide (CO2). The greenhouse gas methane is less well known, but although it is much rarer in the atmosphere, its global warming potential is 80 to 100 times greater per unit.
More than half the methane caused by human activities comes from oil production and agricultural fertilizers. But the gas is also created by the natural decomposition of biomass by microbes, for example in lakes. In their most recent publication, Maciej Bartosiewicz, postdoc in the Department of Environmental Sciences at the University of Basel, and Professor Moritz Lehmann, head of the biogeochemistry research group, outline the potential and theoretical possibilities for using methane from lakes and other freshwater bodies for sustainable energy production.
Read more at: University of Basel
