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Drilling surprise opens door to volcano-powered electricity

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Re: Drilling surprise opens door to volcano-powered electricity

#31

Post by Keyframe »

pm90 wrote: post #19

For many years I imagined that space faring future humans would depend on hydrogen gas clouds as the source of their energy. Think: intergalactic highways with gas-stations at such formations. But this brings another resource to mind: In the future, we might view planets, not merely for their mineral resources, but also for the heat that may be trapped within them (AFAIK not all planets have a hot, molten core). Auto…

Outer space clouds and/or nebulas would have extremely low density I think. Imagine the vastness of sail collectors (or similar) needed to yield significant amounts!

Re: Drilling surprise opens door to volcano-powered electricity

#32

Post by dredmorbius »

dubfan wrote: post #30
dredmorbius wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is, however, access in a number of regions where geothermal can be quite useful. Iceland doesn't have a large population (332,000), but it's relatively close to Europe (or at least Ireland), and there have been proposals to link it via undersea transmission cables to the European grid. Other significant resources exist around much of the Pacific Rim, including in Hawaii (limited population and a long way from n…

> Given Africa's status as a developing country Africa is not a country.

Doh! Um. I'm going to fix that.

Re: Drilling surprise opens door to volcano-powered electricity

#36

Post by LargeWu »

dredmorbius wrote: post #25
ck2 wrote: post #12

About about using the $1 Billion in natural gas they burn off every year in North Dakota for electricity instead of just heating the atmosphere. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2269517/The-picture-... http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/27/business/energy-environmen...

The challenge with natural gas is capture and transport. Gas is, well, a gas. It doesn't stay put, and it takes considerable infrastructure to convert it to a more manageable form (compressed or liquified). Both of which are states it doesn't particularly seem inclined to remain in. There've been enough issues transporting oil from new drilling zones. Transporting gas (by truck, rail, or pipeline) is even more comple…

I don't think anybody disputes that it is expensive to capture and transport natural gas, but it's a solved problem. The state has taken a completely hands-off approach, letting oil companies operate in a manner that maximizes their immediate profits. Since it's cheaper to just burn off the gas, they do that, environmental consequences be damned. You don't see the rate of flaring in other states because other states have much stricter regulations about how long each well can do this.

North Dakota's leadership (which is generally from the eastern part of the state) is too busy counting money and patting themselves on the back for all the economic activity they 'created' to be concerned about the welfare of anybody who actually lives in or around the patch.

Re: Drilling surprise opens door to volcano-powered electricity

#37

Post by _delirium »

evandena wrote: post #21
squigs25 wrote: post #16

The problem with geothermal power is access. It's the reason why Iceland is almost entirely powered by renewables, and why the rest of the world isn't. So if Iceland finds pockets of magma at 5km, it's only really a breakthrough if you can access magma at shallow depths in other regions.

Most of Iceland's power comes from hydro, not geothermal.

Electric power, yes, but a significant proportion of Iceland's total energy usage is heating, which is about 90% geothermal.

Re: Drilling surprise opens door to volcano-powered electricity

#38

Post by ep103 »

dredmorbius wrote: post #26
pm90 wrote: post #19

For many years I imagined that space faring future humans would depend on hydrogen gas clouds as the source of their energy. Think: intergalactic highways with gas-stations at such formations. But this brings another resource to mind: In the future, we might view planets, not merely for their mineral resources, but also for the heat that may be trapped within them (AFAIK not all planets have a hot, molten core). Auto…

Stars are fusion plants. Sufficiently large planets are dual gravitational + fission plants. There's pretty good reason to believe there may be active natural sustained chain reaction fission reactors within the Earth's inner mantel / outer core (for reasons the geologists / geophysicists are better able to explain, apparently not in the core itself). There's also considerable latent heat from formation -- even after…

I don't buy it. Those articles just make it sound like any truly future craft needs to include a biome and fission reactor; in short, an aircraft carrier with Wisconsin fast plants. But sci-fi has been pointing us in this direction for ages. The Apollo missions were amazing, Space-X is amazing, but they are very much more like knarrs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knarr) than the caravels (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caravel) that came later and found the new world.

Re: Drilling surprise opens door to volcano-powered electricity

#39

Post by eitland »

pygy_ wrote: post #20
DanWaterworth wrote: post #13

According to the International Geothermal Association, 10,700MW of geothermal electricity was generated worldwide in 2010 I doubt they said that.

Why?

Maybe because it doesn't specify if it is continuus power, peak power etc?

Re: Drilling surprise opens door to volcano-powered electricity

#40

Post by tokenadult »

ck2 wrote: post #12

About about using the $1 Billion in natural gas they burn off every year in North Dakota for electricity instead of just heating the atmosphere. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2269517/The-picture-... http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/27/business/energy-environmen...

I seem to be one of the few persons commenting so far who actually lives in the region and regularly reads local reporting on issues in North Dakota (a state neighboring my state). Western North Dakota, where the Bakken Shale oil boom is occurring, is very sparsely populated and historically had minimal infrastructure. It takes TIME to build pipelines to move the natural gas brought up by oil drilling operations to natural gas customers. Pipeline proposals are currently in regulatory review. There isn't even pipeline infrastructure in place yet for all of the petroleum production in North Dakota--much of the oil produced there is brought to broader markets in tanker trucks, and the truck traffic volumes are putting a lot of stress on highway roadbeds until the highways can be upgraded. Right now there is a boom economy in western North Dakota, with extremely high wages, low unemployment, a shortage of single women,

http://www.twincities.com/national/ci_22382285/north-dakota-...

and established businesses in the region importing workers from as far away as Illinois just to keep up normal operations as workers quit to join oil field crews. There hasn't been time to build infrastructure yet to move away the natural gas to markets that will pay for the gas--especially because the price of natural gas all over the United States has crashed because of the huge increase in production in the last few years. But given time, yes, there will be infrastructure in place to transport Bakken Shale gas to other markets, and I'm sure that we here in Minnesota will be as glad to have North Dakotan natural gas to supplement our nuclear-powered energy grid as we already are to have North Dakotan petroleum brought in by truck. Once more pipelines are built, the entire United States energy economy will become more flexible.

Still to be figured out is the economics of converting natural gas deliquefaction terminals (those cost BILLIONS of dollars and years to build or convert) along the Gulf Coast into liquefaction terminals, so that the United States can get into the business of exporting liquified natural gas. It could happen. North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula used to flare off all of their natural gas incidentally brought up during petroleum production--there was no local market for it. It took a long time to develop natural gas liquefaction; now there is international trade in natural gas that was undreamed of when I was growing up.

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