Plastic Pipes Conference Association # 2023 Lake Buena Vista
Shane Schuessler, Richard Coombs, Mohamed Hageb, Abdullah Saber, Grigorios Vigellis, Chandra Basavaraju
Bordered by Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo sits Lake Kivu, an African Great Lake formed along the East African Rift. Lake Kivu is one of the world’s deepest freshwater lakes and contains enormous quantities of dissolved carbon dioxide and methane gas held at depths greater than 1100 feet (350 meters). The carbon dioxide and methane are both products of decomposing biological matter and volcanic activity. The high concentrations of gas at the lower depths are a result of water trapped between density layers that prevent mixing of the different layers of water within the lake. The vast amounts of carbon dioxide and methane contained in Lake Kivu present a potentially grave risk for the local shoreline communities. A lake in Cameroon with similar carbon dioxide levels realized an event known as “lake turnover” in 1986. A carbon dioxide cloud was release into the atmosphere effecting local shoreline villages resulting in numerous human and livestock fatalities.
In the early 2000’s, a group of geoscientists recognized that there could be a way to minimize the potential for a lakeside disaster at Lake Kivu, while also harnessing the lake’s suspended methane for power. The idea was to pull methane-rich water from the depths of the lake, utilize a gas-water separator to extract the methane, then transport the methane to fuel a new onshore power generation facility.
An innovative power company took this concept and created a design to harvest Lake Kivu methane and create electricity. The design includes an offshore facility of four barges to house the gas processing equipment and support eight submerged water – gas separators. It also includes large diameter HDPE pipe risers that operate as a natural siphon to deliver the gas to the separators and discharge the degassed water. The collected methane gas is then transferred in a submerged HDPE pipeline approximately four miles (six kilometers) to the power generation facility
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