New Siberian robot to look into Baikal?s gas-hydrates

Scientists from two major academic and research institutions in Siberia?s Irkutsk are deploying a brand new Russian robotic complex to assess the gas-hydrate reserves in Lake Baikal.

Scientists of Irkutsk State Technical University (ISTU) and their colleagues from the Institute of Limnology (part of the Siberian branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences) are deploying a brand new Russian robotic complex later this month to assess the gas-hydrate reserves in Lake Baikal, ISTU announced earlier this week. According to ISTU, scientists from Irkutsk, Moscow and St. Petersburg collaborated to develop and make this sophisticated hydroacoustic robotic system. It was successfully test-run on Baikal in late June. The robot can submerge as deep as 1,600 meters and is designed to help study near-bottom rock, measure temperatures and electrical conduction, and also evaluate methane content. The global gas-hydrate reserves are estimated to exceed those of natural gas by several times. However, there?s no commercially viable technology to produce gas-hydrates, most of which are found across the oceans...