It looks like one of those projects that are built to get billionaires to invest with the use of computer graphics.
I hope it's more than that.
Quaise Energy – Unlocking the true power of clean geothermal energy
61–70 of 98 posts
Re: Quaise Energy – Unlocking the true power of clean geothermal energy
#62I 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 you…
Ah, good. Someone from the drilling industry. Has anyone ever tried microwave drilling?
Using gyrotrons to generate enough microwave power to cut and weld glass has supposedly been tried. The company that was doing it seems to have disappeared.[1] Ticker symbol changed from GYTI to GYTIE, indicating failure to file financial statements, and the stock price went to zero. They were talking about this as a precision heat source, like a laser cutter. That would be useful. But apparently it didn't work out.
It seems a big stretch to take that technology from nowhere to something you can push down a drill hole. That's close to the toughest application. You'd expect industrial applications first.
Now, if you could make that technology work, there's a cool application. This August, NASA is sending a probe to the asteroid Psyche, which supposedly has large amounts of heavy metals, possibly including gold.[2] If NASA finds valuable metals, there will be serious interest in asteroid mining. If you want to mine an asteroid, you need cutting tools. But you don't have any useful gravity to hold them to the surface. So, drilling with some kind of energy beam looks worth the trouble. Might be the killer app for gyrotron drilling.
Re: Quaise Energy – Unlocking the true power of clean geothermal energy
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
The claims about geothermal and fusion are that they will make energy ridiculously cheap. Won't we use much more if it is cheap?
Fusion will never be cheap, or used. Geothermal will not be as cheap as solar, so if we use a lot more power, it will mostly be solar. (Geothermal would be used mainly for baseline, at night.) Solar intercepts energy already arriving, to use before it is then re-radiated to space. It arrives regardless. So, no problem. What we have now is a catastrophically big unfolding climate crisis. Even if there were a problem,…
Seems that solar panels can work at night too:
https://www.saurenergy.com/solar-energy-news/arriving-soon-s...
Re: Quaise Energy – Unlocking the true power of clean geothermal energy
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
I didn't say "profitable". I said "cheaper than a windmill". That's the standard in this industry. And windmills are really, really cheap. Pick the low hanging fruit, then get fancy. Exotic energy technologies are at best an exercise in premature optimization, and more likely an attempt at soaking the woke masses to fund someone's startup.
Why not both? Windmills are intermittent, hugely dependent on location, short lifespan, requires a lot of space, dangerous to service etc etc. It's not a full solution.
Jeder Euro fürs Atom fehlt uns beim echten Ökostrom.
Because if you habe finite resources, you better invest them in something that works than waste a considerable part to do something that probably maybe should work.
Re: Quaise Energy – Unlocking the true power of clean geothermal energy
#65Is the reason they have to drill down 20 km to 500C rather than say 7 km to 175C (presumably a far simpler task) is the equilibrium heat flow? That is, the water/steam cycle is extracting heat from the surrounding rock. That can only be extracted at a rate that matches the heat inflow, or ideally, ever so slightly less, so as to maintain equilibrium over decades over cubic miles of rock. Yes, I understand that larger…
Interesting point, what would explain it is non linearity. If you get 20% efficiency at 5 but 35% at 7km depth it might still be worth it. Would still have to outperform exponential drill cost with depth
Re: Quaise Energy – Unlocking the true power of clean geothermal energy
#66Sounds 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
> The deepest reached 12,262 meters (40,230 ft) in 1989
Hopefully those 30 years of technology will be of service
Re: Quaise Energy – Unlocking the true power of clean geothermal energy
#67Maybe it's my ignorance but I've always been a little terrified by this technology. I truly expect a major disaster within months, maybe a few years, after someone drills too deep at the wrong place.
Plus, isn't it a bit shortsighted to suck up the planet's heat? Eventually something is gonna give. But that could be centuries from now so who cares, huh?
Re: Quaise Energy – Unlocking the true power of clean geothermal energy
#68> Geothermal has the power density and scalability of fossil fuels
This has the same vibe as hydrogen cars. Don't buy battery EVs, wait a decade and buy hydrogen cars that will be just as good as ICE!
Or, I can just buy an EV today that's already better than ICE.
Re: Quaise Energy – Unlocking the true power of clean geothermal energy
#69> Geothermal has the power density and scalability of fossil fuels This has the same vibe as hydrogen cars. Don't buy battery EVs, wait a decade and buy hydrogen cars that will be just as good as ICE! Or, I can just buy an EV today that's already better than ICE.
We never know which tech will be commercially successful until we try
Re: Quaise Energy – Unlocking the true power of clean geothermal energy
#70> Geothermal has the power density and scalability of fossil fuels This has the same vibe as hydrogen cars. Don't buy battery EVs, wait a decade and buy hydrogen cars that will be just as good as ICE! Or, I can just buy an EV today that's already better than ICE.
We never know which tech will be commercially successful until we try
That's fine, just announce it as "we have X, Y and Z solutions to the problems caused by fossil fuels and are investigating A to see if it's even better".
Don't take the Bill Gates route of talking down existing, proven solutions to talk up your speculative investment in some unproven tech or the fossil fuel approach of funding weird future research aa an excuse to spend lots of time talking about how amazing fossil fuels are.