2024-07-22 15:59:37
A team of international researchers has discovered that Minerals at the bottom of the deep ocean produce oxygen, even 13,000 feet below the surface, without the need for electricity. This surprising finding challenges the belief that only photosynthetic organisms, such as plants and algae, produce Earth’s oxygen. Research shows that oxygen can also be produced on the seabed, where light does not penetrate, from sustain aerobic marine life in complete darkness. “This discovery forces us to ask ourselves questions such as: Where can aerobic life begin?“commented the experts who lead this work.
Andrew Sweetman of the Scottish Society for Marine Sciences (SAMS) made this discovery while working on an underwater mountain range in Northwest Pacific Ocean. When his team discovered oxygen at the bottom of the ocean, sYou think the machine must be broken. “When we first got this data, we thought the sensors were wrong because all the research done in the deep ocean looked at oxygen consumption rather than production,” explained Sweetman. “We are coming home and we recalibrate the sensors, but, over 10 years, these abnormal oxygen readings have been showing up. We decided to use an alternative method that work differently from the optode sensors we are using. When both methods produce the same result, we know we are facing something innovative and unexpected,” he said.
“When we first received this data, we thought the sensors were wrong”
Later, Sweetman contacted another scientist to try to understand the cause of this phenomenon. And that’s when Franz Geiger of Northwestern University led the electrochemistry experiments to try to reveal this mystery. In his earlier work, Geiger had already discovered that rust, when mixed with salt water, could generate electricity. The researchers wondered if the deep polymetallic nodules could generate enough heat to produce oxygen in large quantities without the need for electricity. This chemical reaction is part of a process called electrolysis of seawater, which removes electrons from the oxygen atom of the water.
natural geobattery
To investigate this hypothesis, Sweetman sent several kilos of polymetallic nodules, which was collected from the ocean floor, to Geiger’s laboratory at Northwestern. Sweetman also visited Northwestern last December and spent a week in Geiger’s lab. As tests have shown, Bare 1.5 volts (same voltage as a normal AA battery) is enough to split the cable. Surprisingly, the team recorded voltages of up to 0.95 volts on the surface of individual nodules. And when multiple parts are grouped together, the voltage can be much more significant, such as when batteries are connected in series.
“It looks like we have discovered the natural ‘geobattery’l,” said Geiger. “These geobatteries are the basis for a possible explanation for the production of black oxygen in the ocean. Geiger, the total number of polymetallic nodules in the Clarion-Clipperton area alone is sufficient to meet the world’s energy demand for decades. But Geiger saw the mining operations of the 1980s as a warning.
“Many mining companies want to extract these elements from the ocean because they are very useful materials for the production of batteries”
The discovery, presented this Monday in the journal ‘Nature Geoscience’, is based on a mineral deposit that grows on the ocean floor we had? contains metals such as cobalt, nickel, copper, lithium and manganese. “Many mining companies want to extract these elements from the ocean at a depth between 3,000 and 6,000 meters since they are very useful materials for the production of batteries. We must also think about how to extract things these applications out. without reducing the oxygen source for life in the ocean,” Geiger added.
“In 2016 and 2017, marine scientists visited sites that had been used in the 1980s and found that even bacteria have recovered in mining areas“Geiger points out. “However, in the unexploited region, marine life flourished. It is still unknown why these ‘dead areas’ persisted for decades. However, this puts an important caveat on the processes for seafloor mining, because the diversity of seafloor animals in nodule-rich areas is greater than in the abundant tropical forests,” he concluded.
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