Monday, January 25, 2010

Tests of Alaskan bioreactors

With 3 out of six reactors working really well, and the three that aren't being the 2 psychrophiles and 1 psych/meso mix in the cold room, we ran an experiment today that yielded suggestive evidence that psychs need high energy feedstock before they will yield gas.

January 25 at 9:09am ·
Thomas Henry Culhane
Thomas Henry Culhane
Essentially we lit up several buckets that had been filled with different amounts of psych mud and sugar and left to sit for several weeks in the cold. All flamed up except the one that had received no sugar. That one had no methane at all. I'm thinking the mud in and of itself has insufficient carbon to support effective methanogenesis. ... See MorePerhaps in the thermokarst lakes the reason we see "hot spots" of methane production is that those areas are regions of collected carbon-rich detritus the bacteria are feeding on? I would love to do a scuba survey of the arctic lakes and see...
January 25 at 9:11am · 

No comments: