Energy of the Two Seas Part 2. The Natural Generator of the Blue Sea
Energy resources of the smallest sea in the world — the Sea of Azov.
Valeriy Verkhovsky. "Krymska Svitlytsia" newspaper, 2018, issue No. 21
In the previous article, we looked at the possibilities of extracting energy resources in the Black Sea, but our country has access to two seas. With what treasures will the Sea of Azov surprise Ukrainians?
This is a unique natural phenomenon: the water in Azov is less salty — only 11.5% salt on average, which is ten times more than in fresh water, but three times less than the salinity of water in the oceans. The ancient Greeks even called it the Maeotian Lake. And the name Azov comes from the Arabic "al-zaward", which means "azure", the blue of the sky; our ancestors called it the Blue Sea. However, the saturation with marine vegetation gives its water a green color.
It is the shallowest sea in the world, with a maximum depth of only 14 meters, and an average of 6 meters, even though the bottom is covered with a layer of silt 4-6 meters thick. This happened because it warms up well in summer. This sea has always favored the reproduction of plankton; it is not for nothing that one of its Turkic names is Balik-deniz — the Fish Sea. Both marine and freshwater fish species live here. By the amount of marine fauna and flora, the Sea of Azov holds the world leadership. For example, the fish density per unit area in Azov waters is six and a half times greater than in the Caspian Sea, forty times greater than in the Black Sea, and 160 times greater than in the Mediterranean.
Biochemical processes take place in the silt of the bottom, and the conditions for them are more favorable than in the neighboring Black Sea, so they run more intensively, and thus a colossal amount of biogas is generated in a smaller area. The biogas consists of methane; unlike the depths of the Black Sea, the biogas in Azov waters contains almost no hydrogen sulfide.
Rising to the surface, methane escapes into the atmosphere, deepening ecological problems. According to estimates by American researchers from Stanford University, the concentration of methane in the air is growing — methane destroys the ozone layer, causes climate change, and intensifies global warming processes. That is, the extraction and combustion of Azov methane will cause less damage to the planet's nature than its free self-release into the atmosphere — paradoxical, but true. Can we collect this resource gifted by nature, which is also renewable? Scientists from Mariupol Technical University worked on this problem.
A fairly simple technology for methane extraction based on the principle of communicating vessels (in the diagram) has been developed. Methane always rises up and thus fills the upper container.
In coastal waters, the concentration of methane is several times higher than in the central part of the water area. So it can be extracted without going out to sea, without costs for floating platforms or bottom equipment. But here the question of the ownership of the Azov shores arises sharply, because a third of the coastline is the Yedykui (Lenine) district of Crimea, currently torn away from our state by Russian invaders, a quarter is the Krasnodar region, and the rest is the coast of the Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson regions, which the "Kremlin dreamer" is also not against annexing to the shores of "Novorossiya".
The Sea of Azov could yield 100 billion cubic meters of biogas annually. Ukraine currently consumes 32 billion cubic meters of natural gas, of which 18 billion is extracted in our country, and the rest is imported. The entire Russian Federation extracts 600-640 billion cubic meters of natural gas, and this allows not only enriching the accounts of oligarchs but also keeping the budget of the rotten empire from complete catastrophe and creating favorable conditions for promoting the "Russian world" and strengthening influence on European countries.
The future of Ukraine, like that of the entire human civilization, does not lie in the endless burning of hydrocarbons; new technologies must be implemented — environmentally friendly, affordable, and efficient. However, hydrocarbons will remain raw materials for the chemical industry in the future. But while that is still far off, is it worth investing in the economic prosperity of other countries by buying energy resources abroad, when we have such riches at home?