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For Mars_B4_Moon...
Thank you for your collection of links (with comments) in Post #25
The problem with volcanoes is they are unmanaged. Volcanoes are Ma Nature's way of dealing with excess heat from nuclear fission in the core of the planet.
Until now, it has been assumed (by humans) that there is nothing to be done about volcanoes, except to study them and to try to get out of there way when they are about to erupt.
However, this is 2022, and this ** is ** the NewMars forum.
The Earth is running a big, dumb nuclear reactor. The energy produced needs to be given release, or it will find a release we (humans) don't want or need.
There are a few examples of geothermal energy collection on record.
https://www.usgs.gov/observatories/calv … mal-energy
The article at the link above contains a section about the achievements of residents of California, in tapping geothermal energy available in their region.
A geothermal power plant near the Salton Sea in the Imperial Valley, with the Davis-Schrimpf mud pots (or mud volcanoes) in the foreground. Photo by Shaul Hurwitz in January 2016.
In southern California, the Imperial Valley Geothermal Area consists of eleven active power plants along the southeastern shore of the Salton Sea. The heat supply there is associated with volcanism of the Salton Buttes, where the most recent eruptions formed obsidian lava domes about 1,800 years ago. In the future, the Hell’s Kitchen geothermal project, currently under development, will use geothermal power to extract lithium sustainably from geothermal brine.
On the southwest side of the resurgent dome in Long Valley Caldera, the Casa Diablo geothermal power plant (also called the Mammoth Geothermal Complex) sits just outside of the town of Mammoth. The power plant taps into the caldera's hydrothermal system at a point where the hot water is only a few hundred feet below ground. The complex currently consists of 3 geothermal facilities generating 30 MW of power, but a new plant scheduled to come online in 2022 is expected to double the power generation.
The Coso volcanic field in eastern California has 38 rhyolite domes that formed within the past one million years, with the 17 youngest emplaced between ~ 100 ka and ~ 78 ka. Power plants here link to the southern California power grid and currently generate only a little more than 50% of the peak capacity.
Altogether, California’s active volcanoes sustain the largest geothermal electric generation capacity in the United States. In 2020, there were 40 operating geothermal power plants in the state which provided about 6% of California’s in-state electric generation. For comparison, 48% of California’s electricity was generated by natural gas, 16% by photovoltaic solar panels and 7% by wind turbines. Continued research on the hazards posed by California’s volcanoes, and parallel research on new sources of clean energy, will benefit all residents of California. This includes a future where geothermal power and heat can potentially play a key role in the transition to a renewable, decarbonized energy system.
To head off an explosive release at Yellowstone (for example) the energy drawn from ** that ** reservoir needs to be increased dramatically.
In the article at the link above, I noticed a reference to the need for a supply of water to feed the geothermal energy collection process. The best way to supply that energy is the ocean, and (as it happens) there is discussion of delivering ocean water to the Salton Sea, since it is below sea level.
Some of that water could be enlisted to pull thermal energy from the existing reservoirs under ground.
In order for sea water to be brought to the vicinity of Yellowstone, it will need to be pumped up to around 8000 feet above sea level.
However, the energy produced should be more than sufficient to power the lift, with plenty to spare.
(th)
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After starting from the top of this topic from 2004, I was surprised to find this report by SpaceNut on a NASA proposal to pull thermal energy from the Yellowstone supervolcano.
http://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php … 26#p140126
(th)
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Like all good information Nasa only did research into the prospect and no actual build to prove out. If they had the area would have water to use for other things rather than to make power with it.
Time to google for existing projects
UNDERSTANDING YELLOWSTONE’S DYNAMIC THERMAL SYSTEM
https://www.usgs.gov/volcanoes/yellowst … ellowstone
https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/can-we-use-he … one-energy
There does not appear to be any energy from a geothermal plant in use or built in the Yellowstone park area.
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For SpaceNut re topic (with a focus on Yellowstone) ...
There is a data point that seems reasonable (to me at least) to include in the discussion...
per Google:
The central portion of the Yellowstone Park is essentially a broad, elevated, volcanic plateau, between 7,000 and 8,500 feet above sea level, and with an average elevation of about 8,000 feet.
Apr 2, 2007
Geological History of the Yellowstone National Park
www.nps.gov › parkhistory › online_books › yell › hague › sec1
The ocean would be an inexhaustible source of water to use for a power plant to pull thermal energy from the Yellowstone supervolcano hot spot.
However, the ocean is (about) 8000 feel ** below ** Yellowstone, ** and ** it is beyond the Great Salt Lake ....
I am looking at a Google map showing the park in Wyoming.
It is (roughly) Northeast of Salt Lake City.
So! I am inspired by this discussion, SpaceNut!
Until this moment, I had no concept of a commercial application for sea water to be fetched from the Pacific and delivered to Great Salt Lake, other than the (very modest) benefits to the local economy in Utah.
However, in the citation you posted, there is mention of the need for water to be fed into the hot spot under Yellowstone, to pull thermal energy from the core of the Earth. There ** is ** no water available for the purpose in Wyoming.
However, if a pipeline were constructed to deliver sea water to the Great Salt Lake, which is itself at 4200 feet, then it would be another 4000 feet of elevation to reach the thermal energy site at Yellowstone.
The pipeline ** already ** has to reach (nearly) 8000 feet to cross the Sierra Nevada mountains to reach Nevada.
Per Google ...
In Wyoming, I-80 reaches its maximum elevation of 8,640 feet (2,630 m) above sea level at Sherman Summit, near Buford, which, at 8,000 feet (2,400 m), is the highest community on I-80. Farther west in Wyoming, the Interstate passes through the dry Red Desert and over the Continental Divide.
Interstate 80 - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Interstate_80
About Featured Snippets
According to the sources found by Google, the highest elevation of Interstate 80 is in Wyoming.
However, the Donner Pass stretch through the Sierra Nevadas appears to be a solid runner up!
http://www.gribblenation.org/2022/01/in … tains.html
Interstate 80 east of the City of Sacramento ascends into the Sierra Nevada Mountains towards the Nevada State Line. Interstate 80 climbs to the 7,240 foot high Donner Summit and gradually descends into Nevada following the course of the Truckee River Canyon. Interstate 80 in the Sierra Nevada Mountains builds upon the historic corridors of; the Dutch Flat & Donner Lake Road, First Transcontinental Railroad, the Lincoln Highway, Victory Highway and US Route 40.
This post could certainly go into the Interstate 80 topic, SpaceNut.... It would fit in there quite well.
It provides an economic incentive to drive the Great Salt Lake pipeline!
I would appreciate someone taking a deep dive (if you have the time) into the NASA study, to see if the energy requirements of the United States could be satisfied by harnessing the thermal energy of the Yellowstone hot spot.
Are the NASA authors of the study still working, or have they retired by now?
(th)
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Water in thermal steam creation would be nearly closed loop for use and would only need to be topped off occasionally.
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For SpaceNut re #30
Thanks for engaging with me on this!
While I appreciate the sensible nature of your expectation in #30, it seems to me it is a ** theory ** that needs to be validated against actual practice.
It is possible you might be thinking of steam operations in a nuclear power plant optimized for long term service where every molecule of water has to be accounted for.
It is also possible you are not aware of vast quantities of water that are drawn into the system for cooling, and immediately expelled to the outside, loaded with thermal energy that cannot be recovered for power use.
In any case, there are in existence a large number of geothermal power plants in operation in various countries.
In order for this topic to have credibility for advancing a proposal, the exact nature of the water flows at existing installations must be known with certainty.
In any case, to ** prime ** a geothermal system of the size we are talking about here, we (they) are going to need tremendous quantities of water, so a sea water feed would seem justified (to me at least).
Please see if you can find links to existing geothermal plants or their contact pages, so we can begin the process of confirming your theory, or (perhaps) showing why it does not match reality.
We have a firm estimate of $2-3 billion (USD) to build a plant to harvest energy from Yellowstone. That investment should deliver power for 50 years at a minimum, so the investment should be recovered many times over, with power delivered to the rest of the country. Let's see if we can give the NASA engineers a reason to develop their ideas further.
Furthermore, this topic is about the risk of taking NO action to harvest energy from Yellowstone. While it appears that there are some who think the hot spot is moving away from Yellowstone, to my way of thinking it is wise for humans to draw energy out of the core intelligently, rather than allowing Ma Nature to blow Her top because She has no other recourse.
(th)
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There appears to be at a minimum of 4 types of thermal heating of water to steam of which when water is plentiful is the venting into a pond or atmosphere.
The one I would want to use has a heat exchanger within the transfer of heat energy so as to limit water losses.
It does not seem to need to go very deep to get to an amount of heat to turn into power.
There again how hot do you want it to be.
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For SpaceNut re #32
Thanks for taking a look at this topic.
your question "how hot do you want it to be" is interesting, and I hope that Calliban sees this topic and tosses in a post or two....
In general terms, if a person is designing a heat engine, the greater the difference between the hot end and the cold end, the better off (more efficient) the system will be.
Unlike others in the forum who are approaching this topic with a deep fund of knowledge and experience, I have the merest glimmer of an idea how geothermal power plants operate.
Recently you offered the suggestion that it might not be necessary to replenish the working fluid, if a system is well designed.
Certainly a Stirling engine does NOT lose working fluid as it collects energy from the fluid during it's operating cycle.
The question I would have as we (forum) consider this topic in greater and greater depth, is how do existing geothermal power plants achieve the low temperature end of the cycle?
One option is to dump the heat into cold water on the surface.
But the scenario we are considering is Yellowstone, where climate change is likely to reduce supplies of water.
The only heat disposal possibility that I can see at the moment is dumping to the atmosphere, but it seems (to me at least) that adding thermal energy to the atmosphere is counter productive.
The sea water we've discussed recently ** might ** be able to absorb ** some ** of the waste heat, and no harm would be done if the sea water is being pumped on to customers further away from the Pacific. Even there, the thermal energy would seem likely to end up in the atmosphere, but the heat transfer would be occurring along the pipeline.
Ma Nature blows Her stack periodically because She has no other way to get rid of excess thermal energy. If humans are going to pick up some responsibility for helping to bleed off excess thermal energy, I'm guessing some fairly creative ideas will be needed.
(th)
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Yes, sterling engines use heat and one we know quite a bit about is the molten sodium one that is part of the Krusty reactor prototype.
The cooling for that one is a close radiating of energy as heat into the open sky.
No reason not to do the same but then again, we are talking about warming up the world again....so let's keep the heat in the ground.
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For SpaceNut re #34
Thanks for mentioning the KRUSTY system. Study of that system should be helpful. It will show what the high temperature is, and it will show that the engineers are hoping to achieve with the radiator to space,
I think you are close to "seeing" a solution, if the excess heat can be radiated to space.
One thing that I think your closing comment is missing .... the heat is ** already ** in the Earth. Our challenge is to get it ** out ** before Ma Nature decides to blow Her stack.
I'm hoping you will decide to pursue another option than keeping the heat in the ground.
(th)
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You move it away from the source to a place that is cooler much farther away from the very hot site. It is used to heat homes, hot water that we use other energy sources for ect....
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For SpaceNut re #36
It is time for study of actual working power plants, ** and ** for study of the NASA proposal, to see what would actually work. The question to be addressed is how to obtain the benefits of heat flow from hot to cold.
We know going in that the hotter the source, and the colder the heat sink, the more energy that can be extracted.
One question I do have, and which you may know or be able to find out is ... is sea water used for steam engines in sea going vessels? I doubt there are very may steam vessels still in service anywhere, but at one time that was state-of-the-art everywhere. I'm assuming sea water makes steam as well, or nearly as well, as fresh water, but I'm ** also ** assuming the precipitation of solids suspended in the sea water is a problem for engine operators.
This topic is about volcanoes ... it is being focused right now on the potential to draw useful power from the thermal energy collected under potential volcanoes, with the objective of draining excess energy.
You move it away from the source to a place that is cooler much farther away from the very hot site. It is used to heat homes, hot water that we use other energy sources for ect....
These are interesting ideas, for sure. It is MOST convenient to move energy away from Yellowstone in the form of electrical power. The energy collected at Yellowstone cannot be used to heat homes directly, because there are no homes there, and presumably never will be.
What this topic needs is the ability to concentrate attention on the specific problem of collecting thermal energy from under the surface of the Earth, without heating the atmosphere, or the water at the surface, or the soil at the surface.
The quantity of energy to be collected is measured in gigawatts, if I understand the potential correctly.
Social issues involved are non-trivial ...
Preservation of the National Park is a high priority, so the energy works need to be located on private land which is not part of the park itself. That is a useful focus for research.
Identification of ideal materials for construction of radiators would seem to be a useful activity
What this forum ** really ** needs is a member who finds this focus worth investment of time and energy, and is willing to share what is learned with the readership.
if there is (by chance) a reader who is not already a member of the forum, and who would like to work on this specific problem, please see the Recruiting topic for application procedure.
(th)
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The quantity of energy to be collected is measured in gigawatts, if I understand the potential correctly.
This came up in the Mars Earthquake thread and the potential of using already heated areas of Mars for energy, I believe California, Iceland and Japan were examples quoted. Although Japan is high tech it is under invested in Geothermal, California Imperial valley alone has estimated 2,900 MW of geothermal potential and in Iceland I think Geothermal power facilities currently generate 25 + % of the country's total electricity production they even warm their streets in the cold of winter, gas released during construction might add to climate change or noxious smells if released but on Mars this would not be much of a problem.
Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2022-07-10 07:03:03)
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NASA Simulation Suggests Some Volcanoes Might Warm Climate, Destroy Ozone Layer
https://spaceref.com/earth/nasa-simulat … one-layer/
Unlike brief, explosive volcanic eruptions such as Pinatubo or January’s Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha‘apai that occur over hours or days, flood basalts are regions with a series of eruptive episodes lasting perhaps centuries each, and occurring over periods of hundreds of thousands of years, sometimes even longer. Some happened at about the same time as mass-extinction events, and many are associated with extremely warm periods in Earth’s history. They also appear to have been common on other terrestrial worlds in our solar system, such as Mars and Venus.
“We expected intense cooling in our simulations,” said Scott Guzewich of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “However, we found that a brief cooling period was overwhelmed by a warming effect.” Guzewich is lead author of a paper about this research published Feb. 1 in Geophysical Research Letters.
While the ozone loss was not a surprise, the simulations indicated the potential magnitude of the destruction, “about two-thirds reduction over global average values, roughly equivalent to the whole planet having an ozone thinning comparable to a severe Antarctic ozone hole,” said Guzewich.
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Tonga eruption blasted unprecedented amount of water into stratosphere
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Are We Ready for the Next Massive Volcano?
https://nautil.us/are-we-ready-for-the- … ano-24918/
Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2022-09-02 08:34:15)
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The Tonga Eruption Produced a 90-Meter Tsunami
https://www.universetoday.com/157522/th … r-tsunami/
The gigantic underwater Tonga volcano eruption event captured the world’s attention in January of this year. People from around the world marveled at the satellite imagery of this awesome demonstration of nature’s destructive capability. But only now are we learning that the volcano triggered something else – a tsunami wave up to 90m tall, nine times higher than the tsunamis generated by earthquakes.
Researchers centered at the University of Bath used a combination of sea level oscillations, atmospheric observations, and computer simulations validated by real-world data to come to the conclusion about the size of the tsunami generated by the Tonga eruption.
They found that there were two drivers of the enormous tsunami wave. The first driver of the tsunami was a series of atmospheric pressure waves that encircled the globe and pushed water with them. This was followed an hour later by a wave generated by the displacement of water from the underwater eruption itself.
This one-two punch created a tsunami wave that was initially up to 90 meters high, which is almost as tall as the Statue of Liberty. Thankfully the Tonga volcano was far enough away from land that this tsunami did not have more serious impacts. That said, sea level rises were recorded in coastlines around the world after the event, and five people tragically died from the tsunami.
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Its only time which will tell if earth has an even more powerful volcanic eruption.
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New Island and who will stick a flag in it?
The island was created by an underwater volcanic eruption near Tonga and New Zealand
NASA's Observatory found a new 6-acre island has emerged in the Pacific Ocean
A New Island Just Appeared in the Pacific Ocean
https://futurism.com/the-byte/new-islan … ific-ocean
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Eruption of Italy's Stromboli volcano spotted from space
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more concern for Quake or Tsunami?
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Video Shows Indonesia's Mount Merapi Volcano Erupt, Sending Mixture of Lava and Gas for Miles
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/video-s … 19241.html
Magellan spacecraft images reveal volcanic activity on Venus
https://abc57.com/news/magellan-spacecr … y-on-venus
Volcanoes on Venus May Be Erupting As We Speak
https://www.yahoo.com/news/volcanoes-ve … 56816.html
We had the subject of Earthquakes on Mars discussed, there is also the limnic eruption, also known as a lake overturn a rarenatural disaster in which dissolved carbon dioxide CO2 suddenly erupts from the dee forming a gas cloud capable of suffocating wildlife, livestock, and humans. A limnic eruption may also cause tsunami or seiche rising CO2 displaces water. Scientists believe earthquakes, volcanic activity, and other explosive events can serve as triggers for limnic eruptions.
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Volcano rumbles near Mexico City, coating towns with ash, disrupting flights
https://www.chron.com/news/world/articl … 117050.php
The Tonga Eruption Was So Powerful it Disrupted Satellites Half a World Away
https://www.universetoday.com/161516/th … orld-away/
New map catalogues more than 85,000 volcanoes on Venus
https://www.theguardian.com/science/202 … noes-venus
Juno Reveals Volcanoes on Io
https://www.universetoday.com/161391/ju … oes-on-io/
Jupiter’s moon Io is the most volcanic world in the Solar System, with over 400 volcanoes. Some of them eject plumes as high as 500 km (300 mi) above the surface. Its surface is almost entirely shaped by all this volcanic activity, with large regions covered by silicates, sulphur, and sulphur dioxide brought up from the moon’s interior. The intense volcanic activity has created over 100 mountains, and some of them are taller than Mt. Everest.
Io is unique in the Solar System, and the Juno orbiter’s JunoCam captured some new images of Io’s abundant volcanic activity.
Io is in a tough position. It’s locked in a kind of gravitational tug-of-war with massive Jupiter and the other Galilean moons, Ganymede, Europe, and Callisto. All that gravitational energy, particularly from Jupiter and Europa, creates friction in the moon’s interior that creates ‘tidal heating.’ That sets it apart from Earth’s volcanism, which is caused largely by the heat from the decay of radioactive isotopes in the mantle, including uranium, potassium, and thorium. In fact, Io produces bout 40% more heat than Earth, an amount that simply cannot be produced by radioactive decay.
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A "supervolcano" in Italy last erupted in 1538. Experts warn it's "nearly to the breaking point" again
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Volcanoes and Heat and Mining on the Moon?
Extra heat coming out of the ground at a location on the Moon believed to be a long dead volcano which last erupted over 3.5 billion years ago
https://thedebrief.org/buried-on-the-fa … discovery/
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