WHAT CAN HAPPEN, OR MIGHT BE HAPPENING ALREADY

June 15/2010-7:20

   By Isaac N.

     ( EDIT ) As some of my readers have pointed out, this post has nothing to do with burning oil. In my over zealousness to point out the things that could go wrong, I presented a false statement.My apologies.My mentions of burning oil come from my thoughts about how hydrocarbon based fuel cells work. And their discussion below is merely to provide the reader with  " Food for thought " by educating him/her about some very interesting technologies. As far as the convergences of the sciences below, read this first before you go any further.

    A priori Principles and Scientific Knowledge


( RE-EDIT 9:59 PM EST ) Actually I was wrong, it does have to do with burning oil...... Improper burning of crude causes benzene production.

Forming of bezene

    If there is not enough oxygen present to completely burn the fuel to
carbon dioxide and water other products may form. The most common
partially burned products are likely to be carbon C (soot) and deadly
carbon monoxide CO. It would appear that the hydrogen in the fuel
molecules is more easily burned and usually forms water

    Therefore it is extremely important that any combustion system is as
efficient as possible eg gas heaters, furnaces etc must all have
excellent ventilation for complete combustion to harmless water and
carbon dioxide. Carbon monoxide is colourless and odourless and even
low concentrations in the air can be fatal. Carbon monoxide is
unfortunately emitted by all car exhausts, though catalytic converters
help reduce this by converting nitrogen monoxide (another pollutant)
and carbon monoxide into harmless nitrogen and carbon dioxide.


http://www.123helpme.com/view.asp?id=122234



   What I want to point out to you below, is just that there are some bigger and deeper factors at play than an out of control well.

    Geomagnetic currents that influence tectonic plate movements are influenced by the magnetosphere,which is in turn influenced by the ionosphere, which just happened to get heavily charged by the solar flare NASA observed this week, which, BTW, was huge. Look it up or read my post under this one down a bit and look at the photos. Also , significant here...is COREXIT , Benzene  and a common chemical found in the gulf area that is commonly used for refining oil.

    Go read this link real quick from Wikipedia.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_battery

    Ok, you're back.

   Now leave again and read this real quick, sorry for leading you to links, it's easier because the typing has been done for me already,lol.

http://science.howstuffworks.com/lightning.htm/printable

   First off, there are 6 very relevant things going on in the Gulf of Mexico, all at the same time, which modern science has never observed happening all at the same time, that can facilitate a giant electrochemical reaction between the ionosphere and the earths crust by conductive sea water acting as a pathway for ionosphere discharges....like the lightening that stuck the BP ship in the G.o.M. yesterday.. The conditions are ripe.

   The conditions are similar to whats called a Gas diffusion electrode. (GDE) are electrodes with a conjunction of a solid, liquid and gaseous interface, and an electrical conducting catalyst (salt water) supporting an electrochemical reaction between the liquid and the gaseous phase. There are large amounts of benzene in the G.o.M., which is a heavier than air and stays low to the ground as a result. As well, it is easily ignited by sparks or open flame.

   http://www.novachem.com/socialresp/prodsteward/docs/BG/BenzeneBG.pdf


   http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxprofiles/tp3-c6.pdf

    My ideas formed while reading some things..

   A :  about Maxwell's equations( thanks Chris ), which are a set of four partial differential equations that relate the electric and magnetic fields to their sources, charge density and current density. These equations can be combined to show that light is an electromagnetic wave.

  B :  Michael Faraday built the first dynamo, a copper disk that rotated between the poles of a permanent magnet and produced an electromotive force (something that moves electricity). His work in electromagnetic induction led to the development of modern dynamos and generators. Faraday also discovered the compound benzene...of course, his discovery of Benzene at the same time his ground-breaking work on electrical generations have nothing to do with each other......or anything else in this post....that's sarcasm.

    Anyways,...

1, Our ionosphere is highly charged right now, due to the massive solar flare being observed by NASA,
     ( check the site.) hence the lightning everywhere,,,Go read this about the effects of coronal mass ejection,     ( ie: Solar flare ) and the effects on the earth's magnetosphere.

   2.  The Gulf is a dead zone, ...sadly now more than ever, but the significances here are the low oxygen levels in the water and salt saturation in the deep-water areas.

  3. There are large amounts of heavy metals in the water in the deep-water G.o.M. .They have accumulated because the Mississippi river brings them to the Gulf in the form of runoff, They accumulate at the seafloor.. Their relevance here is that it has been known for a long time that all the common metals behave relatively similarly in terms of being able to allow the flow of electrons. Some metals conduct electricity way better than others. Common knowledge.

  4. There are also large amounts of 2-Butoxyethanol in the depths in the G.o.M. Contrary to popular belief , it does not      " breakdown "  at 5k feet deep like it does in shallower water. Pressures keep it from going anywhere until deep currents sweep it into the shallower areas where it can diffuse and sublimate from the water. That's where it rapidly breaks down. It's use as an ingredient, is because it keeps chemicals in suspension. That's why it's used as a common " adjuvient " ingredient in everything. So, due to it's solubility in water it will remain suspended.

 5. Methane, produced by microbes in the process called methanogenesis.




An anaerobic organism or anaerobe is any organism  that does not require oxygen for growth, could possibly react negatively and may even die in its presence. There are three types:

    * obligate anaerobes, which cannot use oxygen for growth and are even harmed by it;
    * aerotolerant organisms, which cannot use oxygen for growth, but tolerate the presence of it; and
    * facultative anaerobes, which can grow without oxygen but can utilize oxygen if it is present.


 And ...how to grow them

Culturing anaerobes

Given that normal microbial culturing is undertaken in an aerobic environment, the culturing of anaerobes poses a problem. To overcome this, a number of techniques are employed by microbiologists. One way required the injection of the bacteria into a Dicot. The Dicot would then provide an environment without oxygen thus ensuring the survival of the anaerobes. The GasPak System is an isolated container which achieves an anaerobic environment by the reaction of water with sodium borohydride


    In other-words.....these microbes need a dead zone to grow......now onto the chemicals and the gases suspended in the water at great depths in the Gulf presently

6. Sodium borohydride. Important here why ?

    First, there are millions of kilograms of Sodium borohydride produced annually, far exceeding the production levels of any other hydride reducing agent. It is a common runoff into the Mississippi . It is also used in refining oil in the process of cracking, and thus found in the gulf area. Most typically, it is used in the laboratory for converting ketones and aldehydes to alcohols ( which, if you read down to the other type of fuel cell decription below of the methane fuel cell, alcohol can be used instead of methanol) . It's less flammable and less volatile than gasoline, but more corrosive. It is relatively environmentally friendly because of the low toxicity of borates.

     Scientists and chemists achieve an anaerobic environment by the reaction of water with sodium borohydride and sodium bicarbonate tablets to produce hydrogen gas and carbon dioxide. Hydrogen then reacts with oxygen gas on a palladium catalyst to produce more water, thereby removing oxygen gas. This is how dead zones are recreated in a laboratory.

     The hydrogen gas produced by sodium borohydride is generated for a fuel cell by catalytic decomposition of the aqueous borohydride solution. In other-words how you make a fuel cell with water .

     Another type of fuel cell runs off sodium borohydride, also known as sodium tetrahydridoborate, is an inorganic compound with the formula NaBH4. This white solid, usually encountered as a powder, is a versatile reducing agent that finds wide application in chemistry, both in the laboratory and on a technical scale. Large amounts are used for bleaching wood pulp. The compound is insoluble in ether, and soluble in glyme solvents, methanol and water, but reacts with the latter two in the absence of base.[2]  An alternative IUPAC name is sodium boranuide.

  Remember that you just read about it being used to create conditions in a laboratory to produce those microbes that eat hydrocarbons ? Onward.


 So, there is a very high amount of methane, sodium borohydride and a bunch of other chemicals being kept in suspension in water under great pressure with a very high salt saturation and very low oxygen levels...that's prime factors for acting as a pathway for electrical discharges due to low resistance.

    Solar flare 1080 which just happened,and is still winding down,  is my next topic. The problem of magnetic disturbances and magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) wave generation in the ionosphere from solar flares is well known. How does this have to do with an Earth battery and tectonic movements ? The magnetohydrodynamic generator or dynamo, transforms thermal energy or kinetic energy directly into electricity. The problem of magnetic disturbances and magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) wave generation in the ionosphere are known to directly play a part in both hurricane and storm developments and behaviors,  as wells as tectonic interplay.

Magnetohydrodynamics  (magnetofluiddynamics or hydromagnetics) is the academic discipline which studies the dynamics of electrically conducting fluids. Examples of such fluids include plasmas, liquid metals, and salt water.........

   So now, keep in mind our ionosphere is highly charged right now, from the solar flare observed by NASA ,

go read this....

http://www.ann-geophys.net/13/1197/1995/angeo-13-1197-1995.html


And now think about what you just read. 
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BELOW ARE SOME FUEL CELL DESCRIPTIONS. READ THEM IF YOU DON'T BELIEVE THE ABOVE.

   Virent can make a batch of fuel in one hour rather than the days required for fermentation of plant sugars into ethanol or the eons to produce natural petroleum, though it employs the same tricks as nature: heat and pressure. The real key to the process is catalysis, which enables and speeds up the necessary chemical reactions. Or as physicist Steven Koonin, undersecretary of science at the U.S. Department of Energy told the recent ARPA-e conference, "During my time at BP, I came to understand that catalysis is more of a black art than science."

   That's because much of what happens when a catalyst affects a given chemical reaction is unknown. DOE and others are working to change that but Virent is simply harnessing it. Cortright and chemical engineer James Dumesic discovered in their university lab back in 2001 that by starting with water and various carbohydrates from plants—basically, carbon, hydrogen and oxygen compounds—and using catalysts, heat and pressure, they could start creating CO2 and hydrogen and then use that hydrogen to eliminate the oxygen as water (the process produces more water than it consumes). "If we didn't make H2 we started making these nonoxygenated hydrocarbons, losing the H2 into methane, ethane and gasoline components," Cortright explains.


   The process requires platinum, rhenium and ruthenium catalysts, in the shape of sand or gravel pellets, all of which are expensive and rare. "They also use these types of catalysts in an oil refinery," Cortright notes. "It's been done in the oil business for 50 years." None of the catalysts are consumed and the reaction is actually exothermic, meaning it produces heat. "The catalytic reactions in total generate sufficient heat to sustain the process without the requirement of additional energy input," says Lee Edwards, Virent's CEO.


   In fact, the "green" gasoline can be made at temperatures ranging from 175 to 300 degrees Celsius and pressures of as much as 90 atmospheres and delivers nearly all of the underlying plant's embedded energy into the resulting mix, though roughly 50 percent of the carbon is lost as CO2 or waste products. That mix is then subjected to acid or base condensation as well as distillation to create and separate the gasoline and jet fuel. The waste products are burned as fuel to drive the process.

 Very important here....Earth battery....Wikipedia link...and after you get back from the link think about all the metals listed on the right of the wiki page...which are the same metals that have been flushed into the gulf for a long time.



     Now the definition of one particular type of fuel cell.from Wikipedia. Important here.


    A solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) is extremely advantageous “because of a possibility of using a wide variety of fuel” [12]. Unlike most other fuel cells which only use hydrogen, SOFCs can run on hydrogen, butane, methanol, and other petroleum products. The different fuels each have their own chemistry.

For methanol fuel cells, on the anode side, a catalyst breaks methanol and water down to form carbon dioxide, hydrogen ions, and free electrons. The hydrogen ions move across the electrolyte to the cathode side, where they react with oxygen to create water. A load connected externally between the anode and cathode completes the electrical circuit. Below are the chemical equations for the reaction:

Anode Reaction: CH3OH + H2O ? CO2 + 6H+ + 6e-

Cathode Reaction: 3/2 O2 + 6H+ + 6e- ? 3H2O

Overall Reaction: CH3OH + 3/2 O2 ? CO2 + 2H2O + electrical energy

At the anode SOFCs can use nickel or other catalysts to break apart the methanol and create hydrogen ions and CO2. A solid called yttria stabilized zirconia (YSZ) is used as the electrolyte. Like all fuel cell electrolytes YSZ is conductive to ions, allowing them to pass from the anode to cathode, but is non-conductive to electrons. YSZ is a durable solid and is advantageous in large industrial systems. Although YSZ is a good ion conductor, it only works at very high temperatures. The standard operating temperature is about 950oC [13]. Running the fuel cell at such a high temperature easily breaks down the methane and oxygen into ions. A major disadvantage of the SOFC, as a result of the high heat, is that it “places considerable constraints on the materials which can be used for interconnections” [13]. Another disadvantage of running the cell at such a high temperature is that other unwanted reactions may occur inside the fuel cell. It is common for carbon dust, graphite, to build up on the anode, preventing the fuel from reaching the catalyst. Much research is currently being done to find alternatives to YSZ that will carry ions at a lower temperature.


    In the archetypal hydrogen–oxygen proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) design, a proton-conducting polymer membrane, (the electrolyte), separates the anode and cathode sides. This was called a "solid polymer electrolyte fuel cell" (SPEFC) in the early 1970s, before the proton exchange mechanism was well-understood. (Notice that "polymer electrolyte membrane" and "proton exchange mechanism" result in the same acronym.)


On the anode side, hydrogen diffuses to the anode catalyst where it later dissociates into protons and electrons. These protons often react with oxidants causing them to become what is commonly referred to as multi-facilitated proton membranes. The protons are conducted through the membrane to the cathode, but the electrons are forced to travel in an external circuit (supplying power) because the membrane is electrically insulating. On the cathode catalyst, oxygen molecules react with the electrons (which have traveled through the external circuit) and protons to form water — in this example, the only waste product, either liquid or vapor.


In addition to this pure hydrogen type, there are hydrocarbon fuels for fuel cells, including diesel, methanol (see: direct-methanol fuel cells and indirect methanol fuel cells) and chemical hydrides. The waste products with these types of fuel are carbon dioxide and water.



 Read this paper on a methane fuel cell and how methanol is used. Methanol was pumped into the deep water areas.


Methane Gas Diffusion Fuel Cell


US6339038: Catalyst for a fuel cell containing polymer solid electrolyte and method for producing catalyst thereof


A catalyst for a fuel cell containing polymer solid electrolyte, which catalyst contains platinum/ruthenium on a carrier in proportions of 2-4:8-6 on a mol basis and exhibits excellent resistance to catalyst poisoning attributed to carbon monoxide. In the present invention, there is disclosed a method for producing the catalyst, which-includes adding an alcohol to a mixture of an aqueous solution of a ruthenium compound and a platinum catalyst, reducing ruthenium, and causing ruthenium to precipitate at a reaction temperature between 60° C. and the boiling point of the mixture after addition of alcohol. A suitable alcohol may be ethanol or methanol in the concentration of 5-15 vol. % based on the total volume of the mixture, and a suitable heating temperature is in the vicinity of the boiling point of the mixture to which ethanol or methanol has been added. According to the present method, there can be produced a platinum/ruthenium catalyst for a fuel cell containing polymer solid electrolyte, which catalyst contains platinum particles and ruthenium particles in proximity to one another on a carrier without causing aggregation and exhibits excellent resistance to catalyst poisoning attributed to carbon monoxide.


http://www.delphion.com/details?pn=US06339038__

I don't know, but it would seem that burning the oil could all have some severe consequences. If there aren't some in motion already.....oh wait. There are.


http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=turning-carbohydrates-into-hydrocarbons