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Quaise Energy – Unlocking the true power of clean geothermal energy

quaise.energy

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Re: Quaise Energy – Unlocking the true power of clean geothermal energy

#41

Post by worik »

robbedpeter wrote: post #36
worik wrote: post #19

What an inadequate website for such bold claims. Here in New Zealand we found that geothermal is not "non polluting". There are a lot of unforeseen consequences with bringing deep water to the surface. Still much better than nuclear that makes our children pay for current consumption or coal that means we are paying for our ancestors consumption....

Iterating over past failures is how progress happens. There will be negative consequences from anything, but the reason for geothermal is that it doesn't have the negative consequences fossil fuels do, and it's cleaner than wind or solar. Also, I'll take localized pollution over global disruption any day.

How is geothermal cleaner than wind or solar?

In Taupo, if my memory serves, the geothermal fluid was found to have high concentrations of arsenic (?) that was seriously polluting rivers.

The subsidence of surrounding land was a problem too

They developed ways of re-injecting the fluid into the well which they hoped would fix both problems, and time will tell.

Re: Quaise Energy – Unlocking the true power of clean geothermal energy

#42

Post by ncmncm »

trophycase wrote: post #8
asimpletune wrote: post #5

Stupid question but is it possible to cool the earth’s core if this tech was scaled out and used massively?

The short answer is no, the long answer is no, but the really long answer is that everybody pretends that it's 100% safe but I guarantee nobody predicted global warming occurring when fossil fuels first started being used. There will be secondary effects, we just don't know what they are yet

"Secondary effects" is meaningless put up against well-known global catastrophe. Everything has secondary effects. New shoes means your old shoes go unused. Eating now makes you crap later.

What matters is the magnitude of the effect: how much difference does it make?

There will be no secondary effect of geothermal energy extraction even noticeable compared to the present unfolding global climate catastrophe. The latter is what deserves attention. Anything else is a petty distraction. Raising petty distractions from it is a fundamentally evil activity.

Re: Quaise Energy – Unlocking the true power of clean geothermal energy

#43

Post by ncmncm »

snarfy wrote: post #38
asimpletune wrote: post #5

Stupid question but is it possible to cool the earth’s core if this tech was scaled out and used massively?

Not today, but maybe someday. (1) - The geothermal heat flow from the Earth's interior is estimated to be 47 terawatts (2) - Human production of energy is even lower at an estimated 160,000 TW-hr for all of year 2019. This corresponds to an average continuous heat flow of about 18 TW [1]- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_energy_budget#Earth'...

No, because the heat comes out regardless. The difference is whether it is used on the way out.

Likewise for solar and wind.

Re: Quaise Energy – Unlocking the true power of clean geothermal energy

#44

Post by ncmncm »

arnihermann wrote: post #12

There has been some effort on going to really deep depths in IDDP (Icelandic Deep Drilling Project) - see https://iddp.is/about/ If I remember correctly, they were never able to hit their goals because of drilling down into magma chambers. The steam coming up was also of a different scale than regular geothermal steam, causing corrosion that has not been dealt with before. As far as I know, the main problem is coming…

Yeah, so drilling into magma chambers might not be the best approach.

Iceland sits on a big magma chamber, so they would need to proceed differently. Still, they have a lot of practical experience with utility-scale geothermal energy extraction the rest of us ought to learn from.

Re: Quaise Energy – Unlocking the true power of clean geothermal energy

#47

Post by ahyattdev »

thekoma wrote: post #7

Sounds promising. How realistic is the depth target of 20km really? Also, I would assume this infrastructure will be less applicable in locations with frequent earthquakes.

Considering that the current deepest borehole in the world is 12km [1], 20km is a lofty goal.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kola_Superdeep_Borehole

Re: Quaise Energy – Unlocking the true power of clean geothermal energy

#48

Post by formerkrogeremp »

stormbrew wrote: post #31
ajross wrote: post #10

My response here is the same as what I say to proponents of new nuclear technologies: it's gotta work on a balance sheet , not just in a pitch deck. This isn't a new technology enabling new markets and new kinds of growth here, it's just... electricity. And even as a renewable option, it needs to be able to compete not just with fossil fuel generators with-all-the-externalities-factored-in, but with dams and windmill…

> it's gotta work on a balance sheet, not just in a pitch deck. It shouldn't have to work on either of those things, because neither of those things take any account of externalities. This attitude that no energy project is worth doing if it's not profitable is how we're going to kill our entire civilization in a few decades. We need to be thinking longer term than "is it cheaper than coal right now?" when the cost o…

Killing our entire civilization now. Now.

Re: Quaise Energy – Unlocking the true power of clean geothermal energy

#49

Post by totalview »

I hate to play the Cassandra again, but the deepest hole ever drilled by anyone was 7Km (edit: 12Km), a far cry from drilling 20Km holes everywhere on the earth. I’ve worked in oil and gas for over 10 years, including on the largest rotary drilling rig in North America, and it is insane what kind of machinery it takes to get 6,000 feet down and push a tool 15,000 feet out.

Just as insane is convincing anyone that your drilling activities aren’t causing earthquakes, screwing up water tables, or leaking gas and other chemicals out of the ground.

I still hope it works lol!

Re: Quaise Energy – Unlocking the true power of clean geothermal energy

#50

Post by phs318u »

markbnj wrote: post #37
phs318u wrote: post #11

Assuming the millimeter wave drilling technology does in fact hold up (I imagine it draws a LOT of power), the re-use of existing infrastructure (drill a hole at every power station site that boils water to drive a turbine, with existing transmission in place), is brilliant because that's a huge, huge cost avoided - and indeed could be stood up in far less time (barring government approvals) than most mega-scale alte…

You'll be happy to know that movie has been made :). I watched it as a young kid and found it pretty scary. Years later I saw it again and it was of course laughably bad. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059065/

Oh my! I think I saw that as a kid! Haha. Thank you.
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