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Post by helen on Oct 14, 2010 17:15:53 GMT 1
This subject has again, like love, reared up it's ugly head again on a number of blogs....petroleum that has no biological antecedants. What say you scientists commenting here?
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Post by carnyx on Oct 16, 2010 19:44:57 GMT 1
Down on the ocean floor, water pressure gets beyond 10.000 psi. Those ocean thermal vents at that depth get up to 400 degrees.
At these temperatures and pressures water becomes 'supercritical' and will dissolve everything, including gold. Therefore water at these vents contain an amazing array of mineral compounds, dissolved out of the rock ... some of these compounds may be acting as catalysts for the process of the dissolved carbon dioxide combining with water to produce methane. This methane may then precipitate out as clathrate deposits, which get further squashed under the build-up of sediment to form oil/gas deposits. Or, some of this methane could be recycled through the vents to be catalysed into longer chain molecules ( e.g. hydrocarbons) locally, to be eaten by bugs and so to prime the food-chain.
Have a google at direct methane catalysis .... quite a few folk working on it.
PS There are hundreds of thousands of those vents down there. Each one chucks out as much heat as the averate nuclear power station. The first one was only discovered about 20+ years ago, so it shows we know f-all about the earth's processes, really.
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