A photo of a cave where the side walls are ribbed and lit in a butterfly pattern.
Credit: Craig Bettenhausen/C&EN
Lava has been gurgling to the surface near Reykjavík, Iceland, on and off over the past several months. At the end of November, the eruptions got dramatic. Large and steady flows of lava from a set of geological fissures forced the evacuation of the town of Grindavík, the marquee geothermal spa Blue Lagoon, and the George Olah Renewable Methanol Plant, a CO2 utilization pilot plant from the Iceland-based chemistry start-up Carbon Recycling International.
C&EN reporter Craig Bettenhausen was in Iceland in early October en route from the World Hydrogen Week conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. The eruptions in Iceland were dormant at the time, though some roads leading to Grindavík were closed because sections had been engulfed by lava in August.
More accessible during his 23 h layover was a much older volcanic formation, the Raufarhólshellir lava tunnel, 50 km east of the current conflagration. Iceland has many lava tunnels, and this one is a short drive from the nation’s capital city. The tunnel formed 5,600 years ago, according to carbon dating, when lava from an eruption punched its way back underground and melted a subterranean path about 1,360 m long before resurfacing as the land sloped downhill toward the sea.