Eco Factor: Scientists hope to generate clean hydrogen from polluted Black Sea.
The Black Sea, which is often referred to as the largest dead zone in the world due to the high amounts of toxic waste, could be the newest and the most unconventional source of clean energy if new findings conducted by a group of Turkish researchers is to be believed. The influx of toxic waste has reduced the amount of oxygen present in the water and replaced it with hydrogen, which has created high concentrations of hydrogen sulfide gas in the sea. Though poisonous for life, the gas could be used to generate huge amounts of hydrogen which can then be used as a clean, zero-emission fuel.
The research could solve both the energy and the pollution problems with many techniques that include thermal, electrochemical and photochemical processes. These researchers further state that all the hydrogen generated from the deadly sea could be stored in underground caves, which are plentiful in Turkey’s Black Sea region.
The Dark Side:
The research is in its infancy and has several issues that need to be catered to. If hydrogen is harnessed using the thermal process, which is the easiest and also the most convenient of all processes, the energy required to carry out the process would not be much less than the energy finally generated in the form of hydrogen.
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The idea is not a new one. In Romania, former president Ceausescu wanted to build a power plant using the hydrogen sulfide from the bottom of the sea. It could bring to our country 50 years of energetic independence. That was too much for Russian authorities, who convinced Ceausescu that it was not enough hydrogen sulfide in the Black Sea to power the plant. So the idea died. After the Revolution, in 1989, Romanian scientists began to investigate the problem again. There came the conspiracy theories saying that Russians wanted to blow up the entire sea (using the flammable gas below) if NATO army planned to invade Russia. A more realistic concern was that the concentration of the gas is continuously growing, putting in danger the entire ecosystem in the Black Sea. So it needs a solution. In 2004, Romanian scientists in Ramnicu Valcea came with the idea of producing clean energy by burning the gas ”in situ”. But unfortunately the story ends here: the government does not seem interested in this problem, and the appropriations for research are very small...