You can have geothermal power everywhere if you drill deep enough
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Re: You can have geothermal power everywhere if you drill deep enough
#2> Meanwhile, the heat vitrifies the side of the hole, turning it essentially into a glass pipe
I think this is pretty essential and maybe even more important than the depth. Until now it was not economically feasible because the porous rock did swallow a lot of the circulated water in such a drilling. But this technique seems to solve that problem pretty effectively.
Re: You can have geothermal power everywhere if you drill deep enough
#3There’s some very interesting work being done with shallower, cooler temperature geothermal combined with rankine cycle generation as well:
Re: You can have geothermal power everywhere if you drill deep enough
#4Anyone thinking about earthquakes when going that deep?
In Switzerland they had to stop some geothermal projects after triggering earthquakes while drilling deep.
Re: You can have geothermal power everywhere if you drill deep enough
#5Anyone thinking about earthquakes when going that deep? In Switzerland they had to stop some geothermal projects after triggering earthquakes while drilling deep.
The geothermal projects in Switzerland (and South Korea) used pressurized water to form cracks within the rock (similar to fracking). Also typical geothermal projects need to be near fault lines since that is where the low hanging fruit is. Since this method will forgo those steps you should greatly minimize the likelihood of triggering an earthquake.
Re: You can have geothermal power everywhere if you drill deep enough
#6No post body was provided.
Re: You can have geothermal power everywhere if you drill deep enough
#7Assuming this works, tech still won't save us alone.
Pure thermal (ie. just energy, no GHG) climate change is right around the corner if energy use keeps going up exponentially and we keep reducing earth's albedo.
Ecosystems are still being obliterated for cattle and mining.
All ghg free electricity will do is buy a few decades to end (and in the west, reverse) growth. Possibly the only thing that will give civilisation a chance to find a solution, but not a solution.
We should be finding ways for people in the west to live more like developing nations and still thrive, not trying to turn developing nations into the west.
Re: You can have geothermal power everywhere if you drill deep enough
#8A recent podcast interview with Quaise energy's CEO.
https://www.woodmac.com/news/opinion/the-interchange-recharg...
Re: You can have geothermal power everywhere if you drill deep enough
#9Something I've always wondered.
Wouldn't massive scale geothermal end up pumping more heat into the atmosphere that otherwise wouldn't be there?
In contrast, the energy collected by solar and wind generators is from the energy added to Earth by the sun and would be energy in our atmosphere regardless of whether or not we collect it.
But it seems like the heat inside the Earth's core should be fairly well insulated by the lithosphere, and it only slowly leaks out over time. If we start pulling that energy out at a faster rate to generate electricity, could that have a noticeable net increase on total energy under the atmosphere, or is it such an insignificant amount of energy relative to the sun's to not even bother worrying about?
Re: You can have geothermal power everywhere if you drill deep enough
#10Yeah right. They drilled in Strasbourg, France, to get this "free" energy. When they entered production, the city was experiencing an earthquake every month, waking the city at night.
After a magnitude 4 earthquake, they finally shut down the plant.
A town in Germany is devastated also due to geothermal power: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staufen_im_Breisgau