Why is it so much harder to drill a hole 10-20 km deep (where the mantle is predictable) than 2 km deep?
Drilling surprise opens door to volcano-powered electricity
71–80 of 83 posts
Re: Drilling surprise opens door to volcano-powered electricity
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
> there have been proposals to link it via undersea transmission cables to the European grid A transmission cable is sometimes discussed, but so far Iceland has been taking advantage of the fact that aluminum smelting is a workable way to congeal cheap power into transportable money. Aluminum smelting is typically by electrolysis [1], and aluminum is light and compact relative to its value so easy to ship, so smeltin…
Right. Much as food production is an alternative to exporting water, aluminum (or fertilizer) productions are alternatives to exporting energy. You'll typically find aluminium smelters where electricity is cheap. E.g., the Pacific Northwest / Western Canada, where ample hydroelectric resources exist.
> Much as food production is an alternative to exporting water
There's only very little water in exported food, so as long as you're not using non-replenishable sources (like fossil water) or limited sources (like rivers) for food production, the amount of water that is actually exported is negligibly small.
Re: Drilling surprise opens door to volcano-powered electricity
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't get it. If you don't have the capacity to transport what you are producing, you can't be producing. Or put very simply: you can not be allowed to burn off unwanted gas. The cost is certainly not zero , it is an enormous sum that dwarfs whatever profit they could hope to get from selling it, and it is failed states only that would allow this massive negative externality. There seems to be no learning in the Am…
Burning the gas as waste contributes CO2 to the atmosphere, but burning the gas for productive reasons still produces that same CO2. If it were burned for productive reasons, some of the thermal energy released would be stored in chemical bonds formed by the manufacturing of any number of things, but most of it would ultimately still be released into the atmosphere as waste heat during some stage of its use. There is…
Thats a reduction to absurdity. Gas will be burned, entropy will increase.
Re: Drilling surprise opens door to volcano-powered electricity
#74Besides creating electricity, there are many potential industrial uses of magma: "Magma serves as a heat source, replacing fuel in magma smelters, magma forges, magma glass furnaces, and magma kilns...Other uses for magma include obsidian farming, trap design, melting ice, igniting fires, and even garbage disposal." [1] [1] http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Magma
Then one day someone leaves a sock on the ground starting a series of events that ends with everyone in Iceland being either dead or insane.
Urist Björnsson cancels Pickup Item: on fire
Re: Drilling surprise opens door to volcano-powered electricity
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right. Much as food production is an alternative to exporting water, aluminum (or fertilizer) productions are alternatives to exporting energy. You'll typically find aluminium smelters where electricity is cheap. E.g., the Pacific Northwest / Western Canada, where ample hydroelectric resources exist.
> Much as food production is an alternative to exporting water There's only very little water in exported food, so as long as you're not using non-replenishable sources (like fossil water) or limited sources (like rivers) for food production, the amount of water that is actually exported is negligibly small.
There is very little electricity in aluminium too.
That's not the point, really.
Re: Drilling surprise opens door to volcano-powered electricity
#76According to the International Geothermal Association, 10,700MW of geothermal electricity was generated worldwide in 2010 I doubt they said that.
Why?
Power is a measure of... power, not energy. MW/year is a silly unit. In the US energy production on an annual basis is given in BTUs, or Joules (usually quadrillions of BTUs, depending on the scale). Perhaps the article meant 10.7 GW of installed production capacity. Regardless, that's about 0.3 quadrillion BTUs per year, which is a blip compared to the world's energy consumption.
Re: Drilling surprise opens door to volcano-powered electricity
#77Would mining too much geothermal energy hurt the earths dynamo like in the movie The Core :)?
Only so long as the neutrinos don't mutate.
Re: Drilling surprise opens door to volcano-powered electricity
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Burning the gas as waste contributes CO2 to the > atmosphere, but burning the gas for productive > reasons still produces that same CO2. True, but if has to be burned, it may as well be productive. Moreover, if it's burned unproductively now, then presumably there is other productive CO2 being released now as well (unless we start accepting black-outs). There could be as much as two units of CO2 being released now,…
> "Moreover, if it's burned unproductively now, then presumably there is other productive CO2 being released now as well (unless we start accepting black-outs). There could be as much as two units of CO2 being released now, versus a single unit of CO2 otherwise. So that's more CO2 over a short time-scale." I assume that either way, we are going to eventually burn it until depletion. We can't keep it up forever, we wi…
I don't think we will run out of gas before we switch to renewables. The supply of gas (as in, the amount of gas that can be produced per month) is limited and the demand for energy is always increasing, so prices are always going to go up. As new technology develops, and with economies of scale, renewables are getting cheaper. I think we'll get past the tipping point where renewable generation + storage is cheaper than fossil fuels well before we actually run out of gas. Being inefficient with our resources (like burning gas like this) means we'll be much worse off when that happens.
Re: Drilling surprise opens door to volcano-powered electricity
#79According to the International Geothermal Association, 10,700MW of geothermal electricity was generated worldwide in 2010 I doubt they said that.
You're correct. Here's what they said:
> IGA reports in 2010 that 10,715 MW is on line generating 67,246 GWh.
http://www.geo-energy.org/pdf/reports/GEA_International_Mark... page 4, 2nd paragraph of the section "Overview/Results"
Re: Drilling surprise opens door to volcano-powered electricity
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why?
Power is a measure of... power, not energy. MW/year is a silly unit. In the US energy production on an annual basis is given in BTUs, or Joules (usually quadrillions of BTUs, depending on the scale). Perhaps the article meant 10.7 GW of installed production capacity. Regardless, that's about 0.3 quadrillion BTUs per year, which is a blip compared to the world's energy consumption.
> Perhaps the article meant 10.7 GW of installed production capacity.
The original report does indeed, the article misquoted (and possibly misunderstood) it. Here is the exact quote and its surrounding paragraph:
> In 2005, there were 8,933 MW of installed power capacity in 24 countries, generating 55,709 GWh per year of green power, according to the International Geothermal Association. IGA reports in 2010 that 10,715 MW is on line generating 67,246 GWh. This represents a 20% increase in geothermal power on line between 2005 and 2010. IGA projects this will grow to 18,500 MW by 2015, which based upon the large number of projects under consideration appears reasonable if not conservative.
> Regardless, that's about 0.3 quadrillion BTUs per year, which is a blip compared to the world's energy consumption.
note that the quote is about electricity generation, not power consumption in general.
Still a blip though, in 2008 global electricity generation was estimated at 20261 TWh, geothermal production thus accounting for ~0.3% of global production.
A few select countries have fairly high geo ratios though: Iceland's at 30% geothermal, the Philippines at 27%, El Salvador 25%, Costa Rica at 14% and Kenya at 11.2% (2010 numbers).
The US are the biggest producer of geothermal electricity (29% of global production, #2 is the philippines at 18%) but the ratio matches global, geothermal is 0.3% of the US's electricity production.