Planetary Cores and potentials for geothermal power.

Void · 2022-10-11 20:14:02

It is a wonderful thing! I think that a real system that can give wealth, with reduced production of Carbon to atmosphere is very possible.

The other leg of this is to start growing kelp to soak up CO2 from the ocean water and produce food and blue Hydrocarbons.
It seems that Kelp can be farmed this way, very clever: https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2017/07/s … ocean.html

Well, my understanding is that the Kelp do well with being dipped in cold nutrient rich water in the night and then being moved into the sunlight during the day.

https://techxplore.com/news/2017-09-kel … ntial.html

https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/0 … te-change/

The Greens? Just give them an island to goosestep on and let them exterminate each other with regulations. I suppose that was cruel, but my impression is that some of these people want problems that cannot be solved without regulations, regulations and order and goosestepping. The clicking of heals at appropriate times!

Done

Last edited by Void (2022-10-11 20:27:39)

Void · 2022-10-12 19:30:40

I liked this video about wind. This topic is " Planetary Cores and potentials for geothermal power.", but the recent posts indicate the likelihood that intermittent energy sources could be use in a network with geothermal, where the geothermal can also become a storage device for the power of an intermittent energy source.

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=Th … &FORM=VIRE
Quote:

The Godfather of Wind's New Floating Revolution
YouTube · 223,000+ views · 11/30/2021 · by Bloomberg Quicktake: Originals

I am actually very excited by alternative energy sources and think that usually they should be a thing to seek after.

I just don't like the people who try to make it into the next social movement. The problems actually need to be solved, not turned into an infected wound, that talkers can exploit for religion and politics.

I also am very concerned by the possibility that environmentalism may be deteriorating into some sort of method for entities to encumber a productive potential, so as to squeeze it for ransom, the ransom being power or favors. In effect these entities are able to establish a sort of estate of power around the notion of regulating what goes on. Regulation can be appropriate, but it if becomes associated with protection payoffs, then it will be a problem.

This is like an organized crime behavior depicted in shows, where a store owner has to give a payoff, in order for the criminals to leave them alone.

We also have seen a related behavior emerging where some people will claim they are protesting, and yet destroy property and threaten people. It should never be appropriate to have to pay them off to cease and desist the action, but it does appear that that may be in some of the undercurrents.

This, in my opinion is the great danger of allowing people who have words and sticks and stone technology, to try to rule over industrial/technological people. In the end they will become parasitic if allowed, and they may very likely risk killing the host. The host being the productive entity, then everything will collapse.

There needs to be some brakes put on the narratives that anti-individualistic people cook up to try to extort unearned money and power.

When I favor individualism, however, I understand that the ability to cooperate is also a great asset.

We should not give rewards for those who bring in very old-world domination habits. It will end up killing the child.

Done.

Last edited by Void (2022-10-12 19:51:57)

Void · 2022-10-12 19:57:17

Now this was on the edge of my mind for a few days: "geothermal on the ocean floor"

General Response: https://www.bing.com/search?q=geotherma … f50441cb66

https://oceanbites.org/harnessing-geoth … he-future/
Quote:

Harnessing geothermal energy from the seafloor could power the future
March 20, 2015 Anne M. Hartwell
SHNELL, Jim, et al. “Energy from Ocean Floor Geothermal Resources.” Energy 19 (2015): 25.

I have been thinking about geothermal on the ocean floor, where wind turbines already exist. In such places, an electric grid and other assets might be expected to already exist. And who knows maybe it could be done.

Even stranger would be to tap the Midatlantic Ridge, where the seafloor is breaking apart.
Image: https://www.bing.com/images/search?view … ajaxserp=0

I guess it is a little Sci-Fi, but perhaps this could be where "Power to Gas" could be done. There are some islands and seamounts, so maybe those places might work out.

And of course, there are other seafloor spreading areas.

I wonder if the Boring Company could drill a small city in some of those locations to house such a project. A nice thing about it is that there would be cold water to contrast to the geothermal heat. Don't know if floating wind turbines could be put into the middle of the Atlantic someday.

Dream Ware, I guess.

Done.

I guess you might need airlocks and access to some boring tubes???

https://www.boringcompany.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boring_Company

https://www.boringcompany.com/

Then from there drilling with: https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=8d … M%3DHDRSC3

Probably very costly but the wells should be very productive.

But Wish Ware

Done.

Last edited by Void (2022-10-12 20:11:35)

Void · 2022-10-12 21:12:06

Well, I looked a bit further. It seems that some more professional types have been thinking on the lines of parts of the previous posts.

https://www.maritime-executive.com/edit … conversion
Quote:

Developing Prospects for Oceanic Geothermal Energy Conversion
Heated Deep Seawater
While water boils at 212 degrees F at sea level atmospheric pressure, an increase in pressure raises the boiling point. A seawater depth of 5,000 ft yields a pressure of 2237 psia (160 bar) causing heated water to remain in the saturated state at 650 degrees F. Undersea volcanoes release molten material at between 1300 degrees F to 2280 degrees F, generating superheated steam that would rise upward until surrounding seawater sufficiently cools the steam for it to transform into saturated liquid. That heated seawater provides the basis of future ocean thermal energy conversion.
Offshore undersea volcanoes occur in locations near New Zealand’s north island, Iceland, Japan, southern Indonesia, Hawaii, eastern Taiwan, the Philippines and southern Italy. Over the past decade, the government of Iceland has actually considered developing an undersea electric power cable to connect to Ireland and the UK, with possible future extensions into Western Europe. The initiative was intended to attract investment into developing Iceland’s vast geothermal energy potential. Increased interest in expanding carbon-free electric power generation would likely prompt initiatives to access Iceland’s offshore high-temperature deep-seawater for the purpose of developing higher temperature ocean thermal energy conversion.

And then I might wonder if possibly wind and wave might eventually be harnessed along with the geothermal. They may work together well.

Then also the CO2 in the ocean water might let there be Hydrocarbons created from this power.

For Mars of course you might want to find a rift with volcanism, and I guess then you might bond it to solar energy, and perhaps Nuclear.

Done.

Last edited by Void (2022-10-12 21:14:08)

Void · 2022-10-13 19:11:29

Wind again, I am afraid: https://www.freethink.com/environment/f … -wind-farm

There's a ton of wind power in the deep sea. Let's go get it.
Deep sea wind farms could 100x our wind power
By Amanda Winkler
December 2, 2021

And I would presume wave power also.

I and others have suggested using these along with geothermal power and geothermal power storage. This may take some time to arrive at in the deep sea as possible and economic. A good idea though to keep trying.

I have something to offer I think as a device, for energy storage in the ocean, without drilling.

OK, here it is. A cone, probably of Metal, on the sea floor:

It is to be filled very hot water, insulated in part by sea floor materials placed on it.

The deeper it is, the hotter you can make the water. The bigger it is, the better it will hold heat.

It might not be impossible that a wind and/or wave system could be attached to it.

The heat might come from excess electricity from the wind and/or wave devices.

The technology to extract power might be from an adaptation of OTEC.

In the existing OTEC, the main problem is that it takes energy to lift cold sea water.

In this device electricity would heat the water that is already down below in the cone. An OTEC process might not then lift heavy cold fluids as the hot water is already down below.

Additionally, the radiators in the cold bottom water may warm it up and cause an upwelling of nutrient rich water to the surface, encouraging sea life to grow, and even perhaps sequestering some Carbon.

This might be done also in less deep wind turbine installations as well. Those would already have power grids to take in the electric energy to the shore.

There are also many "Deserts" in the oceans that lack nutrients. This could very possibly soak up CO2 and create additional food.

Done.

Last edited by Void (2022-10-13 19:27:40)

tahanson43206 · 2022-10-13 20:15:04

For Void .... re Post #80

Not sure if this helps, but your image of a hot water storage created an image in my mind, of that structure sitting over a hot water vent at the bottom of the ocean.

spreading ridges
Underwater volcanoes at spreading ridges and convergent plate boundaries produce hot springs known as hydrothermal vents. Scientists first discovered hydrothermal vents in 1977 while exploring an oceanic spreading ridge near the Galapagos Islands.Mar 10, 2022
What is a hydrothermal vent? - National Ocean Servicehttps://oceanservice.noaa.gov › facts › vents
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Ocean Vent | National Geographic Societyhttps://www.nationalgeographic.org › encyclopedia › o...
Sep 27, 2022 — An ocean vent sits over a deep fissure in the ocean floor. Ocean vents eject hot, often toxic, fluids and gases into the surrounding ...
Deep Sea Hydrothermal Vents | National Geographic Societyhttps://www.nationalgeographic.org › media › deep-sea...
Sep 27, 2022 — Hydrothermal vents are like geysers, or hot springs, on the ocean floor. Along mid-ocean ridges where tectonic plates spread apart, magma rises ...
Hydrothermal vent - Wikipediahttps://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Hydrothermal_vent
A hydrothermal vent is a fissure on the seafloor from which geothermally heated water discharges. They are commonly found near volcanically active places, ...
Physical properties · Biology of hydrothermal vents · Discovery and exploration
Hydrothermal Vents - Woods Hole Oceanographic Institutionhttps://www.whoi.edu › ... › Hydrothermal Vents
In 1977, scientists made a stunning discovery on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean: vents pouring hot, mineral-rich fluids from beneath the seafloor. They later ...
The Discovery of Hydrothermal Ventshttps://www.whoi.edu › oceanus › feature › the-discove...
Jun 11, 2018 — Hydrothermal vents form in volcanic areas where subseafloor chambers of rising magma create undersea mountain ranges known as mid-ocean ridges.

(th)

Void · 2022-10-14 10:44:13

That is interesting (th). For amusement, I imagined your thing as a spider like robot with legs, hovering over a hot spot to power itself.

But it does seem that geothermal power comes in degrees.
-Some people call thermal storage in soil with heat pumps geothermal, and I suppose it is.
-Some might consider the heating of buildings to be sufficient geothermal power.
-The Canadians and perhaps others seem to have come up with something that can generate electricity, and perhaps anywhere.
-But finally, to go where the hot spots are, that would be approaching "Clark Tech", if it is under the deep oceans, but not necessarily impossible.

Of course, for the Oceans we would have to be concerned about biological communities. That seems a requirement to me. But in some cases, if you get a few kilometers/miles away from an actual crack, should it be likely to have a very thin hot crust?

Could you then "Nest" a cone structure into the sediments of the ocean and harvest hot water? Maybe. Economic? Not sure, probably not yet.

But if you can then associate this with wind and wave power, then it is going to be relatively easy to partner that with geothermal. (Not easy, ever).

Louis was a champion for "Power to Gas" but using solar. I think that perhaps this would be something a 21st or 22nd century civilization might master. The question is, would the ocean geothermal have a better pay off than shallow water or on land geothermal?

The difference in Oceanic and Continental crust: https://vivadifferences.com/difference- … g%2Fcm%203. Quote:

Oceanic crust differs from continental crust in several ways: it is thinner, denser, younger, and of different chemical composition. Like continental crust, however, oceanic crust is destroyed in subduction zones.
The age of the oceanic crust does not go back farther than about 200 million years. Such crust is being formed today at oceanic spreading centres. Many ophiolites are much older than the oldest oceanic crust, demonstrating continuity of the formation processes over hundreds of millions of years.

At this point I do not know if geothermal in general is better under Ocean Crust or Continental Crust. Probably sometimes yes and sometimes no.

A question to ask might be what was on top of the crust over geologic time periods?
-Ice?
-Ocean/Sea?
-Only Air?

Unless ices are grounded, then water is between the atmosphere and the ocean crust. How well does water insulate or facilitate the conduction of heat away from the crust?

For that matter, for the glaciation of the last ice age, how well did that insulate the "Canadian Shield"?

My eyes are on the North Sea, as Europe has extended wind power into it and Iceland already has rift geothermal going. Necessity being the mother of invention, the Europeans have more incentive than others to make this work, if it can work.

We might consider it to be a probable nursery for this to emerge, maybe.

This again: OK, here it is. A cone, probably of Metal, on the sea floor:

Now if you were to tie this in with North Sea wind and wave power, this reservoir might store energy as heat from excess electric output, local to the wind and wave machines.

But if we also include the Canadian geothermal into this, it might work out rather well.

This again as well: https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=8d … M%3DHDRSC3

Quote

Eavor Technologies | The First Scalable Form of Clean Baseload Power
YouTube · 19,000+ views · 9/30/2022 · by Disruptive Investing

That is drilled geothermal. This could perhaps start on the continental shelfs where wind is already established.

So, not extremely deep water.

And then this might be blended with a modified OTEC power generating method, utilizing the cold water below the surface, and the hot water of the cone reservoir.

It often pays to look about on the internet to see what work has already been done. In fact, it is beginning to become a way to avoid wasting time. Here is apparently a nice item: https://www.maritime-executive.com/edit … eat%20sink. Quote:

Developing Prospects for Oceanic Geothermal Energy Conversion

Quote:

Extensively modified OTEC technology that gains access to undersea volcanic heat can operate over a temperature difference of over 200 degrees F, using seawater temperature near the surface as the heat sink.

Video Quote: https://youtu.be/FHBVgRWAt3c

I would be all in for the North American Continent to pioneer this, but Europe has a greater urgency to do it. Also, I have the opinion that my culture is caught in an aging 20th century mindset that does not belong in this time period. There is a great value in coupling the Eurafrican and EuroAsian subparts, but also when it does not work, it is a real pain. It will work out, but we can expect that the Eurafrican subpart to continue to try to destroy industrial capacity, as they want to milk the industrial working class as if they are peasants.

The Nordics may have enough independence from Eurafrican portions of Europe as to be able to not be subjugated to a peasant class. The Europeans in general do not have Oil and Gas reserve wealth to control and use for the subjugation, so they may be compelled to get out of the way, this time.

Just so the reader does not think that I have a bias, actually I do, but it is for this time era. The previous time era, I would have preferred the reverse situation and indeed we did have the reverse situation.

The solution to the current era will be industrial/technical, and not plantation oriented. Not a vertical class system. But both will still exist in various ways.

That is my opinion, and so far, in the location where I live you don't get hauled away to a vertical hell prison for venturing as much as I have here.

I see that there are entries previous that other members have made. I will have to study those.

Done.

Last edited by Void (2022-10-14 11:24:48)

tahanson43206 · 2022-10-14 15:22:30

For Void re Post #82

This is an awe inspiring post! Thanks!

Over the years, your posts have ranged from so-so (very few) to awesome.

This one is clearly (at least in ** my ** assessment) close to the upper range.

I'm here on an errand for SpaceNut, so will leave detailed study for later.

Your discovery of someone actually studying the defunct concept of OTEC in the context of underwater thermal vents is what ** really ** catches my eye.

Bravo!

(th)

SpaceNut · 2022-10-16 20:12:28

Something that is driving the earths internal heat Gravity Is Still Shaping Earth's Surface From Deep Within, New Study Finds

tahanson43206 · 2022-10-29 17:34:28

The report at the link below is about research (and actual drilling) at Cornell University.

It appears that a 2 mile deep well is complete, but the research into how to tap underground thermal energy has just begun.

The long term goal ** appears ** to be to heat the campus, and perhaps to generate some power as well.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/geothermal-2 … 00969.html

Geothermal 2.0: Why Cornell University put a 2-mile hole in the Earth
Stephanie Hanes
Fri, October 28, 2022 at 12:29 PM
The Cornell University campus in Ithaca, New York, is a small city of some 30,000 people, spanning 2,400 acres and hundreds of buildings, including castlelike dorms and state-of-the-art laboratories, an art museum shaped like a sewing machine, and a power plant that produces some 240 megawatts of electricity every year.
This leafy, academic metropolis is perched on layers of sedimentary rock – geology that reveals itself in the gorges that slice through the campus, deep crevices where, long ago, errant waters of retreating glaciers ripped open the earth.
These layers continue deep underground, thousands upon thousands of feet, until they hit what is known as the “crystalline basement.” There, nearly 2 miles down, lies a rock barrier between what we, as humans, typically think of as “earth” on one side, and the planet’s hot, silicate mantle on the other. It also marks the location of what a growing cadre of scientists, entrepreneurs, and government officials sees as a viable solution to a pressing, yet elemental, challenge: how to stay warm.
On the one hand, this might seem like a mundane problem for the intellectual and technical ingenuity of one of the world’s top research universities. Humanoid ancestors, after all, solved this problem of winter centuries ago with their fires and blankets and animal skins. Today, central heating systems have made staying warm almost an afterthought, even in those Northern Hemisphere locations that freeze for months on end.

But there is a looming problem: How we heat mostly relies on burning fossil fuels. This is a problem because of what it means for the world’s climate, which is changing rapidly thanks to atmosphere-warming emissions. But it is also a problem because it is becoming clear that staying warm through winter is tied to global forces often beyond one’s control, such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has resulted in both gas shortages and cost spikes.
This situation, a growing number of researchers say, is requiring a new sort of ingenuity. Until very recently, most of the discussion about moving away from fossil fuel-based heating has focused on electrification – exchanging your oil tank, for instance, for an electric heat pump. But this approach, although effective at lowering greenhouse gases, doesn’t address two big problems: First, the world’s electric grids are already straining to keep up with demand. And second, despite a huge increase in wind and solar power production, most electricity still comes from power plants that burn fossil fuels.
Policymakers have suggested a slew of different models for addressing this quandary, such as extending the life of nuclear power plants, ramping up the number of wind and solar farms, or tapping into the awesome power of ocean waves to produce electricity.
But here in Ithaca, and in a rapidly growing number of locations worldwide, scientists, utilities, and entrepreneurs are flipping the solutions narrative. Instead of looking upward for clean energy, to the sun or the wind, they are turning their ingenuity downward, into the Earth itself. And while the basic concept of geothermal energy has existed for decades – if not centuries, depending on how one looks at it – the current moment of climate concerns, energy prices, and new financial incentives has sparked a new sort of Earth rush.
“We’re seeing a huge influx into the geothermal sector,” says Jeremy Harrell, chief strategy officer at ClearPath, a research and advocacy group that focuses on using free-market policies to accelerate emissions reductions. “Geothermal is exciting. It’s a cost-effective technology that is resilient and that can provide heat and power.”
It could also, if some of the more cutting-edge initiatives succeed, fundamentally alter the way the world understands and uses energy.
In the middle of a nondescript gravel lot, once reserved for contractor parking, high above Cayuga Lake, researchers involved with Cornell’s Earth Source Heat project have drilled down nearly 2 miles, to that crystalline basement, to explore the potential of tapping geothermal heat. Only the wellhead remains – the drill rig and the mud spinners and cement silos departed this fall – but scientists here are still studying the geology of what they affectionately call CUBO, the Cornell University Borehole Observatory. They are modeling water flow, examining seismic behavior, and working with facilities staff to plan a new system for heating the campus.
“If we want to decarbonize, we have to switch from natural gas to something else,” says Jefferson Tester, a professor of sustainable energy systems in Cornell’s Smith School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and the principal scientist for the university’s Earth Source Heat project. “Geothermal would be one of the really good opportunities. ... It’s on all the time, it’s available, it’s stored in the earth. And we can reach it with today’s technology. We’re trying to give an example of what you could do, and what we might have to do.”
Tapping the earth for heat and power, by itself, is not new. In Iceland, where hot rock and subterranean water are near the surface, 9 out of 10 households get their heat directly from geothermal sources. In Boise, Idaho, a centralized geothermal system delivers 177-degree water through a series of pipes that heats millions of square feet of downtown building space. There is also geothermal heating in Paris; San Bernardino, California; and Klamath Falls, Oregon – places where subterranean hot water reservoirs can flow through rock at relatively shallow depths.
These places also tend to have geothermal power plants – facilities that use the Earth’s heat to make steam to spin turbines that generate electricity in the same manner as nuclear or coal plants. The Geysers, for instance, a 45-square mile facility located about 75 miles north of San Francisco, is home to the largest geothermal energy site in the world. This spot, which archaeological research shows was a human gathering place for centuries, has some 300 production wells and 69 miles of injection piping feeding steam into turbines that in turn supply a good percentage of California’s renewable energy – about 8% in 2021. This power, points out Joseph Greco, the head of the Western region strategic initiatives for Calpine, the company that runs the Geysers, is consistent – it doesn’t fluctuate like wind or solar. This is particularly important for a grid that is increasingly maxed out. During the state’s rolling blackouts this past summer, “we were there supplying the grid 24/7,” he says.
But the idea of expanding geothermal anywhere and everywhere, so that the earth beneath one’s feet can take care of a good percentage of one’s own heat and power needs – that’s new. And it has caught the imagination not just of scientists, but of the U.S. Department of Energy, along with a growing number of startups and existing power companies.
“There are not a lot of places in the world that you just have steam billowing out of the ground,” says Paul Thomsen, vice president of business development at Ormat Technologies, a Reno, Nevada-based geothermal company that is rapidly expanding operations. “So you have to start drilling and looking for hidden geothermal resources. And with innovation, the concept is that we don’t have to have Old Faithful to develop geothermal.”
There are different systems for creating this “next-generation” geothermal. There are “closed-loop” systems that, rather than tapping into hot underground water reservoirs, send a pipe through the hot areas, sort of like a big, old-fashioned radiator through the Earth.
In areas without deep water reservoirs – a geology that those involved with geothermal will sometimes call “hot dry rock” – there are also efforts to “frack” deep rock, making fissures through which water can be injected. (Those involved with geothermal insist this is fundamentally different from much-protested natural gas fracking, since they are using only water to break up and run through the Earth, not sand and chemicals.)
Ormat Technologies uses a geothermal system where hot underground brine – water that is filled with salt and other sorts of minerals – heats a secondary liquid, which in turn goes through a heat exchange process to spin power-generating turbines. The company now has an energy portfolio that includes facilities across the world, from the U.S. to Kenya to Indonesia.
But starting a geothermal project takes time. Those involved with geothermal say that the permitting process is cumbersome, often requiring a yearslong feasibility and safety ramp-up. It is location specific, since the type of well and how deep it goes into the Earth change a lot with the geologic composition of any particular place. (This is unlike, say, solar panels, which can be mass produced and installed in almost any location.) And it is not easy to drill deep into the Earth.
But there is an existing industry with a lot of experience in geology and drilling. And with growing political, financial, and climate pressures, it has an interest in diversifying its operations. This, of course, is the oil and gas sector.
Many executives in that industry are now looking at alternatives, says Maria Richards, the Geothermal Lab coordinator at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.
“With the start of COVID [when demand dropped] ... it has seemed to create a push for [the] oil and gas industry to pause and say, we need to look outside the box,” she says. “There will be a time in the future when people do not need or want all this oil and gas.”
She and many others involved with geothermal caution that there are important nuances that differentiate oil and gas drilling from mining Earth heat. But there’s no disputing that there are key similarities. There are a growing number of private sector geothermal initiatives staffed by former fossil fuel workers, and sometimes backed by oil and gas companies themselves. And to go with this, there is growing venture capital investment.
This summer, a company named Fervo Energy raised $138 million for next-generation geothermal energy, the largest private investment in geothermal technology to date. Much of Fervo’s leadership comes from the gas and oil sector. The Alberta No. 1 geothermal project in Canada explicitly advertises its background in drilling and gas exploration – its name is a nod to Leduc No. 1, the site of Alberta’s major oil discovery in 1947.
Catherine Hickson, the CEO of the Alberta No. 1 geothermal energy project, knows that there has been excitement about geothermal in the past. She has worked for more than 40 years in the sector, primarily as a scientist for the Canadian government, and she watched as government and private investor attention turned toward geothermal during global oil crises and then shifted back to fossil fuels. Even today, she says, it’s hard for geothermal to compete financially against the gas and oil sector – if one is going to dig a very deep and expensive hole, there’s still a lot more money to be made bringing up fossil fuels as opposed to hot water.
But all of that is shifting with climate change, she says, and as companies worry about the sustainability of their business models in the face of what is turning into a global consensus on the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions significantly and quickly.
“We want to make sure people understand that our form of renewable energy has a very significant environmental credit to it,” she says. “We think it’s very important from the perspective of greenhouse gas reduction. And financially, carbon credits and ESG [environmental, social, and governance] have dramatically changed the landscape for geothermal.”
Others are working on technology to further reduce the cost of geothermal. Paul Woskov, for instance, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), has turned his expertise in nuclear fusion technology toward making a new sort of drill that uses gyrotron beams to vaporize rock. If he and the company attempting to commercialize his work are successful, they hope to dramatically lower drilling costs – and allow for geothermal to happen everywhere.
“Our principle is that we’ll be able to replace every fossil fuel plant with a geothermal plant,” he says.
To encourage this sort of innovation, the U.S. Department of Energy this year added an enhanced geothermal “shot” to its Energy Earthshots program, a series of initiatives and funding streams intended to spark innovation to help address the climate crisis and grow the clean energy job sector. The department made a specific request for projects that used geothermal for direct heat.
“Everybody is talking about electrification, but I don’t think electricity is the answer,” says Dr. Hickson at Alberta No. 1. “We need to get the world to understand – especially in the U.S. and Canada – the low-hanging fruit here is thermal energy.”
This has been Dr. Tester’s mission for decades.
The Cornell professor began working in geothermal energy as a postdoctoral student in Los Alamos, New Mexico, under the Carter administration, when scientists at the national laboratory began what became known as the Hot Dry Rock Program.
Their goal was not dissimilar to that of today’s geothermal entrepreneurs, although futuristic at the time. “The natural heat in hot dry rock at accessible drilling depths is one of the largest supplies of usable energy that is available to man,” wrote Los Alamos scientist Morton Smith in a 1995 report about the program. “It is potentially capable of satisfying the world’s total energy needs for thousands of years.”
But the funding for that program evaporated during the Reagan administration, and Dr. Tester went to work at MIT, where he continued his research on geothermal energy and heat. In 2009, Cornell asked him to join its faculty and head a project to put that work into practice.
In many ways, Cornell’s Ithaca campus was the perfect location to create an earth source heat system. It was already committed to carbon neutrality. And from a practical point of view, a university, where administrators have access to and control over all the buildings, is a good place to make this sort of systemwide change.
Cornell had already made huge investments in both practical science and infrastructure related to utilities, and it had a suite of alternative energy systems: a central heat and electricity power plant that was converted from burning coal to cleaner natural gas and now tracks and adjusts its operations to keep emissions as low as possible; a generations-old hydropower plant perched alongside the picturesque Fall Creek; and, most unusually, an innovative “lake source cooling” system, which taps the cold, deep water of Cayuga Lake to cool buildings without traditional air-conditioning systems. That lake source cooling, in fact, was the same system that Dr. Tester imagined for heat, just in reverse – a water-based, centralized pipe system that operates with minimal electricity and, thanks to connected solar panels and the hydroelectric plant, almost no carbon. Meanwhile, administrators were aware that heating accounted for more than a third of the school’s total greenhouse gas emissions.
The school was also willing to experiment. It is part of the university’s mission, administrators say, to use academic resources
to develop environmental solutions that can be applied well beyond campus. “The way we can move the needle is finding new solutions,” says Sarah Carson, director of Cornell’s campus sustainability office. “And what’s really special about our geology is that there is nothing special about our geology.”
In 2009, Dr. Tester and his team of graduate students began putting together a plan for the new Earth Source Heat system.
But in many ways, what was under their feet was still a mystery.
“We can make guesses about what rocks are there,” says Patrick Fulton, an earth and atmospheric sciences professor at Cornell and one of the lead Earth Source Heat researchers with Dr. Tester. “There are seismic and geophysical surveys that can help us predict it. But to know what it actually is – for that we have to go down.”
In a windowless laboratory on the first floor of the Cornell University earth sciences building, dozens of blue boxes sit on top of each other, all filled with samples of earth taken from CUBO. Graduate student Sean Fulcher removes one baggie and dumps the contents onto a table. The gravel shards are part of the crystalline basement, which Mr. Fulcher and Dr. Fulton estimate to be 1.1 billion to 1.5 billion years old. The rocks were likely part of the base of a mountain range that once reached higher than the Himalayas.
They extracted these samples from the borehole. The scientists are now exploring each of them, cleaning them, painstakingly recording their features, and building a 3D image of the inside of the Earth. These rocks, and others, give a sort of map of what may be underneath the university – where there are cracks, where geologic layers have pushed into one another, where tectonic movement from 100 million years ago may have left the sort of subterranean features that today could lead to a modern-day heating system.
Some of this research is also essential for safety. “You don’t want to mess around and create earthquakes,” Dr. Fulton says.
This has happened with some geothermal initiatives in the past. In 2009, for instance, the Swiss government abandoned plans for geothermal power after the project generated unexpected seismic activity that damaged homes in the city of Basel.
Closer to Cornell, in Onondaga land south of Syracuse, the Tully Valley mud boils are the continued, polluting legacy of an 1800s attempt to mine salt by injecting water into the ground. The earth fractures created by that process still, more than a century later, allow brine laden with silt and minerals to boil toward the surface, muddying what was once the fishing grounds of the Onondaga people.
This worries some environmentalists, who wonder about the line between ingenuity and hubris – especially with a growing number of private sector interests involved. But geothermal researchers say the alternative of continued fossil fuel emissions is even riskier, and they insist that there is far more attention today to the possible seismic and environmental impacts of drilling.
“There are definitely things that, if you don’t do it well or smart, and you don’t have an understanding of what could go wrong, then could be bad,” says Dr. Fulton.
That’s why an academic effort like Cornell’s is so important, he and others involved say. They are not only demonstrating the viability of a new energy system, but also showing how to foster ingenuity safely. They are working to fully understand the rocks before continuing with the next phase of the project, which would involve drilling more wells and connecting the geothermal system into the campus’s existing heating system. Those involved say the project could still take years to complete, depending on financing.
But for Dr. Fulton, the purpose of CUBO goes beyond simply heating the campus with carbon-free thermal energy. Knowing what is underground helps scientists imagine a relationship with the Earth that is not simply extractive, he says. If humans, for instance, are taking heat from those deep rocks, could we return that energy? Could the Cornell greenhouses, which currently blow heat into the atmosphere, instead send that heat underground, using the Earth as a sort of rechargeable heat battery?
“It’s changing the mindset,” he says. “It is starting to think more sustainably about how we interact with the Earth.”

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tahanson43206 · 2022-11-22 13:41:06

This is an update on work done at MIT 15 years ago. It will take a while for the inventions and techniques described become operational.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technolo … 1e65b11c58

The Independent
World’s deepest hole digger could unlock enough geothermal energy to power the world
Story by Anthony Cuthbertson • 4h ago
26 Comments

A machine capable of digging the world’s deepest hole could potentially unlock enough renewable energy to power the entire planet, according to its creators.
US-based Quaise Energy is developing a drilling rig that it hopes will reach 16km (10 miles) beneath the Earth’s surface in order to tap “inexhaustible clean energy” from geothermal heat in the crust.
“The total energy content of the heat stored underground exceeds our annual energy demand as a planet by a factor of a billion,” Matt Houde, co-founder of Quaise Energy, said at TedX Boston last week.
“Tapping into a fraction of that is more than enough to meet our energy needs for the foreseeable future.”
The current record for the world’s deepest hole is the Kola borehole in the Arctic Circle, which measures 12.2km deep. It took the USSR more than two decades to drill but was abandoned following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The difficulties of drilling at those depths have meant tapping deep geothermal energy at scale has so far proved impossible.
After boring through softer rock closer to the surface, Quaise Energy replaces traditional drill bits with milimetre wave energy that melts and vaporizes the harder rocks it encounters.
The technique was developed by researchers at MIT 15 years ago, and is finally ready to be taken out of the lab.
Artist’s rendition of the the Quaise drilling rig (Hector Vargas, Quaise Energy)
© Provided by The Independent
Several obstacles still remain before record depths can be reached, notably the challenge of removing the ash from the borehole once the rock has been vaporized.
“Our current plan is to drill the first holes in the field in the next few years,” said Houde.
“And while we continue to advance the technology to drill deeper, we will also explore our first commercial geothermal projects in shallower settings.”
If successful Quaise Energy claims that any country on Earth could potentially become energy independent. The firm has already raised more than $63 million in an effort to commercialise the technology.
From news to politics, travel to sport, culture to climate – The Independent has a host of free newsletters to suit your interests. To find the stories you want to read, and more, in your inbox, click here.

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tahanson43206 · 2022-11-22 13:44:29

We see a lot of gloom and doom in this forum.

There is good reason for pessimism. After all, human beings are involved.

However, here is the essence of the post above:

“The total energy content of the heat stored underground exceeds our annual energy demand as a planet by a factor of a billion,” Matt Houde, co-founder of Quaise Energy, said at TedX Boston last week.

We have seen this estimate (or similar ones) in this forum before.

The work it would take to harness that energy is significant, and not many human beings appear capable of leading the effort that would be necessary.

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SpaceNut · 2022-11-22 14:59:46

Why target such a large depth when we already know that the yellow stone area has plenty of heat to tap at a by far less distance to drill?

tahanson43206 · 2022-11-22 15:15:18

For SpaceNut re #88

The area around Yellowstone might be attractive as low hanging fruit. My impression is the developers are aiming for the entire planet, and not a small hot spot which might not be available for one reason or another.

It might be worth taking a look back in this topic, but I'm ** pretty sure ** there is a field being exploited in that general area already.

The opportunity (I think) these folks might be considering is the entire planet, and countries other than the US as customers.

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SpaceNut · 2022-11-22 16:45:40

Here’s how deep geothermal drilling might be clean energy’s future

Quaise-G1-geothermal-rig.jpg?w=1500&quality=82&strip=all&ssl=1

If we can get to 10 miles down, we can start to find economic temperatures everywhere. And if we go even deeper, we can get to temperatures where water [pumped to the site] becomes supercritical, [a steam-like phase that will allow] a step change improvement in the power production per well and so cheapen the cost of energy.
developing technology to blast rock with microwaves to potentially drill the deepest holes on Earth. The gyrotron machine that produces the millimeter wave energy has been used for around 70 years in nuclear fusion research.

https://www.quaise.energy/

SpaceNut · 2022-11-23 10:15:51

I think I have said this before that people are using the wrong term for heat pumps and here is another How Much Does a Geothermal Heat Pump Cost?

AA14rhU5.img?w=534&h=356&m=6

I am sure that brand will change the price with size of capability

According to Angi and HomeAdvisor, the national average cost to install a geothermal heat pump
Typical Range: $2,199 to $21,480
National Average: $12,708
a 2,400-square-foot home needs a 4-ton system (heat pump capacity is measured in tons of refrigeration, with 1 ton being equivalent to 12,000 BTUs).
Well drilling involves boring a hole into the ground with the hopes of extracting a natural resource. This process may be done to access natural gas or brine. With vertical geothermal furnace systems, well drilling is done to extract groundwater. In this type of install, well drilling costs between $5 and $40 per foot. But how many feet are required for an entire system? Most boreholes are 4 to 8 inches wide. They’re spaced 10 to 20 feet apart and are dug down between 100 and 500 feet. Most installations need 3 to 5 boreholes and 300 to 500 feet of piping per ton of system-heating capacity.
The expected lifespan of a geothermal system depends on the part of the system in question. For example, the underground pipe loop portion of the system can last up to 50 years. The geothermal unit itself has a slightly shorter lifespan, averaging 15 to 20 years before needing to be replaced.

There are lots of flavor variations based on local of installation and what obstacles that one might have in the process.

Void · 2022-11-23 10:17:19

So, it is a question of relative costs, and interference. Interference would be when some entity might try to protect the marked for their energy supply.

An example of interference would possible be interference with fracking. That can be done with disinformation and also price wars. Both seem to have been done against Shale.

I have been looking at the phrases "Energy Map", "Solar Energy Map", Energy Map Canada", Wind Energy Map", and so on.

Void · 2022-11-23 10:21:12

So, it is a question of relative costs, and interference. Interference would be when some entity might try to protect the market for their energy supply.

An example of interference would possible be interference with fracking. That can be done with disinformation and also price wars. Both seem to have been done against Shale.

Interference might be done for strictly economic reasons or for geopolitical reasons. Interference that is both would be Russians, and I suspect OPEC, using underground money to stimulate an environmental movement against shale production. And then some ME states, did try to break Shale by a price war, a bit back. Internal to the US, also there may be forces who can make more money by taking bribes from international interference entities, or by being in the oil import process. These would more likely be in the coastal areas and not the areas of the "Undesirables" living in "Flyover Country". There can even be Jealousy of power, where it is from national capitols, energy in the interior of the continent, is to be suppressed, as it might make other states or provinces more powerful.

Control of resources and markets are very important in colonial empires and still even now. It is where the powerful derisive power and wealth. And no, I don't intend to get into a wealth redistribution frenzy, in a leftist fashion. However, by being aware, we may catch an action which is not really in our interests, and it is possible to modify that action, I suppose, on occasion. It does not hurt to understand what is going on, so as to avoid being dupped.

I have been looking at the phrases "Energy Map", "Solar Energy Map", Energy Map Canada", Wind Energy Map", and so on.

So, in those I am interested in the potential "Energy Hot Spots", that are not of Hydrocarbons. Geothermal may qualify.

Query: "Geothermal map": Response: https://www.bing.com/search?q=Geotherma … 0877c08efc
Response: https://www.energy.gov/eere/geothermal/geothermal-maps
Image quote: https://www.nrel.gov/gis/assets/images/ … nd-egs.jpg

Well, I guess this can do for Canada, I believe I saw a better one previously but oh well: https://www.cangea.ca/geothermal-energy.html

Here is an interesting list: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/G … 9200a82881

This one catches my eye: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/A … f567b7b71d Quote:

Corpus ID: 210901042
ABANDONED OIL/GAS WELLS AS SUSTAINABLE SOURCES OF RENEWABLE ENERGY
J. Templeton, S. Ghoreishi‐Madiseh, +1 author M. J. Al-Khawajah
Published 2013
Geology, Engineering

I included interference, because the suspects, are simply creatures in an ecology. Coexistence with them is preferable to butting heads with them. Although both might be mandated from time to time.

But just because a technology is feasible does not mean that it is economical, and the process of interference can influence economics of a technology.

So, I was thinking that universal geothermal power would certainly change the economic activity maps. It would also degrade those who have control of the Hydrocarbon resources, as far as relative power.

I currently live in a location where you would have to drill very deep to get useful energy. So, even in the USA, there will be energy "Hot Spots", and the more like "Have Nots". I suppose there will be a "Brake Even" for drilling wells. And that is OK.

So, in Energy Hotspots, things like Solar Panels and Wind Turbines could be manufactured as it would be a larger energy density.

Things that might work well with geothermal are as others have stated Solar and Wind. Wind is no good beyond a certain distance to an energy market. So, I seem to recall 1000 miles???

Solar can be of many kinds. I think the kind I like most at this time is where homes have solar roofs, and each home system can import or export electricity via a grid.

I actually am interested in pushing excess energy down wells. Perhaps hot water, but I am even more interested in resistive heating, conducting electricity down these wells when the solar energy is available.

So, even in north places, even in the winter, if the central grid goes down, each home may have some power to do basic survival, maybe even more. An additional feature of this is seasonal energy. That is if you live at a high latitude, you are going to get more of your solar energy in the summer than winter. The sun is higher overhead, and the days are longer in the summer. That actually works well for cooling with air conditioning.

As I have said, you could generate hot water with solar and push it down a well. I think that that is less compatible with geothermal. More compatible might be to store summer excess solar electricity inside the same geothermal well.

I cannot know for sure, but just drilling a well to store summer excess solar energy might make sense on its own. If you could somehow mate that with geothermal energy, that would be very nice.

Sorry for the length of the post.

Done.

Last edited by Void (2022-11-23 13:16:37)

kbd512 · 2022-11-23 12:50:17

SpaceNut,

Thanks for the interesting post about the new drilling tech. I'll check it out later.

SpaceNut · 2022-11-23 14:58:20

I think that it's going to be a useable product on the moon and mars in the long run as well.

Void · 2022-11-23 19:50:38

Spacenut said:

I think that it's going to be a useable product on the moon and mars in the long run as well.

It is very easy to agree with you on that.

It really is looking like a golden mix long term. If you use geothermal along with various types of solar and wind, then you can go ahead and still burn hydrocarbons on occasion.

Let say Hydrocarbons end up as 10% of the mix, then your shale reserves last 10 times as long.

I am sure the insect eaters out there will consider that to be the end of the world. but then if you learn how to make those hydrocarbons synthetically, you are good enough as far as I am concerned.

I feel that a lot of the people on the extremes on this are engaging in interference. They are the types who feel that what is really needed is to destroy what is, bloody if possible, and then build their utopia. I really don't have time for those types.

While I consider that most of those in the above are likely on the Left, we also likely have a Judas behavior on the Right. People who want to get money by selling America, or if you like Canida, or UK, etc. out. I almost like the lefties better than the Judas people.

Done.

Last edited by Void (2022-11-23 19:57:28)

Mars_B4_Moon · 2023-02-22 08:21:17

The Earth May Have A Core Within Its Core Within Its Core
https://twitter.com/IFLScience/status/1 … 2699638787

another fringe topic

'Re-starting the Martian core'
https://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=5898

Mars_B4_Moon · 2023-12-01 10:05:52

Mars’ Interior May Have an Extra Layer of Molten Rock

https://eos.org/articles/marss-interior … olten-rock

SpaceNut · 2023-12-03 12:04:47

America’s first ‘enhanced’ geothermal plant just got up and running

On Tuesday, Google and geothermal developer Fervo Energy said that electrons began flowing from the first-of-a-kind facility earlier this month. The 3.5-megawatt project, called Project Red, is now supplying power directly to the Las Vegas–based utility NV Energy.
In the United States, geothermal energy supplies only about 3,700 megawatts (3.7 gigawatts) of electricity, or 0.4 percent of total U.S. electricity generation last year. But according to the U.S. Department of Energy, geothermal could provide potentially 90 gigawatts of firm and flexible power to America’s grid by 2050 — assuming that enhanced systems like Fervo’s catch on as a widespread renewable energy option.
Fervo’s project has a relatively small capacity: enough to power roughly 2,600 U.S. homes at once. Still, that’s more electricity than any of the world’s 40-some enhanced geothermal systems have previously achieved, according to the company.
The startup first began drilling in Humboldt County, Nevada in early 2022. Project Red was initially anticipated to be a 5-megawatt facility that would come online last year.
At the geothermal site, two wells reach 7,700 feet deep and then connect with horizontal conduits stretching some 3,250 feet long. Fervo’s team flows fluid into the project’s artificial reservoir, where the liquid can reach temperatures of up to 376 degrees Fahrenheit. In July, Fervo announced that it successfully completed a full-scale well test in Nevada that confirmed the commercial viability of its next-generation technology.
Roughly four months later, its first power plant is officially up and running.

tahanson43206 · 2023-12-24 15:52:00

https://www.yahoo.com/news/abandoned-co … 00036.html

The article at the link above is about "mining" heat from abandoned coal mines.

It appears that some pioneering work may have been done in Great Britain, where (I understand) industrial scale coal mining had it's start.

The Cool Down
Abandoned coal mines are getting a second life with ‘untapped energy source’: ‘Turning … this liability into a resource’
Doric Sam
Sat, December 23, 2023 at 11:30 PM EST·2 min read
250 comments

Abandoned coal mines are getting a second life with ‘untapped energy source’: ‘Turning … this liability into a resource’
Abandoned coal mines will soon serve a new purpose that will benefit the environment thanks to an initiative from the Biden administration.
In May, it was announced that $450 million from the Inflation Reduction and Infrastructure laws will be used toward clean energy projects, like solar farms, at former coal mines.
“In a less predictable climate and in a warmer world, this opens up an opportunity for turning this legacy, this liability, into a resource,” Natalie Kruse-Daniels, a professor and director of the Environmental Studies Program at Ohio University, told CNBC.
In addition to solar farms, the coal mines provide a new opportunity to use geothermal energy. CNBC explained that the water found at abandoned coal mines typically contains heat from below the Earth’s surface. Drilling holes can bring that heat to the surface to be passed through heat exchanges and heat pumps in buildings and homes.
Geothermal energy has a dual benefit, as it can be used for both heating and cooling purposes.
The initiative followed a similar effort from the government in Great Britain, as the country launched a mine-water heating operation near the end of March that would impact over 1,200 homes.
“Each minable scheme poses its different challenges, and there will be expenses involved with drilling boreholes or laying district heat network pipes in the ground,” explained Gareth Farr, head of heat and by-product innovation at the Coal Authority in Mansfield, England. “But hopefully most of these schemes, if not all of them, will be able to operate at a similar or better cost to the traditional fossil-fuel heating schemes we have at the moment.”
Coal fields exist in at least 20 states in the U.S., including more than 4,000 abandoned coal mines in Ohio alone. Kruse-Daniels and her students at Ohio University have been studying which coal mines are close enough to town to be used for geothermal energy.
“It’s this untapped energy source that could reduce bills, that could make energy more efficient, that could reduce some reliance on fossil fuels,” Kruse-Daniels said.
Farr added, “We can store heat in mines, and we do hope that actually this could become part of vital heat storage. Storage is key, of course, for a lot of renewable energies.”
While Americans wait for geothermal energy, they can take advantage of the Inflation Reduction Act by using money provided by the government to renovate their homes with energy-efficient technology like heat pumps or induction stoves.
Join our free newsletter for cool news and actionable info that makes it easy to help yourself while helping the planet.
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