[HN Gopher] Quaise Energy is working to create geothermal wells
___________________________________________________________________
Quaise Energy is working to create geothermal wells
Author : pseudolus
Score : 173 points
Date : 2022-08-04 13:20 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (news.mit.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (news.mit.edu)
| ufmace wrote:
| I've worked in oil and gas for years. It's possible the article
| is missing a bunch of details, but I'm extremely dubious of their
| idea.
|
| First, how do they plan to address well control? As you drill
| down through the Earth, you drill through many layers of rock,
| some of which contain oil and gas in various quantities. Since
| the thousands of feet of rock above is heavy, they are under a
| lot of pressure, and will be happy to flow out through your
| borehole and up to the surface if you don't take measures to keep
| the formation under control. If they are allowed to do that,
| those flammable materials can easily ignite and cause a fire big
| enough to destroy your entire drilling apparatus and be very
| difficult to put out. Note that you don't necessarily need enough
| oil and gas to be commercially produceable to generate a
| disastrously bad blowout.
|
| Oil wells address this by filling the borehole with drilling
| fluid at a specific density, which produces enough pressure at
| the bottom of the hole to counter formation pressure. Every well
| is also fitted with multiple blowout preventers to seal off the
| well in case of a sudden pressure increase from the formation,
| and also allow heaver weight fluid to be circulated in to get
| back under control. The wells are also drilled and cased in
| sections, so that there is never too large of an amount of
| borehole uncovered that needs to be kept under control.
|
| So given all that, exactly where is this Gyrotron going to be? If
| it's at the surface, how are they planning to microwave through
| miles of drilling fluid and have enough energy at the bottom to
| cut more rock? If it's at depth, how is this Gyrotron going to
| survive the high temperatures there? High-end electronics are
| much more sensitive to extreme heat than drill bits are.
| Especially if you're pumping ~megawatts of energy through them to
| actually cut rock. Speaking of, how would we even get that much
| electric power down there? Oil and gas has spent many billions of
| dollars on this and has yet to find a good solution.
|
| Also, how are they planning to keep this whole straight and judge
| depth? Holes thousands of feet down don't just stay straight, you
| have to actively keep them straight. The oilfield has plenty of
| ways to do this with conventional drilling hardware, how will
| their Gyrotron system manage it? And we also need to transport
| rock cuttings / fumes to the surface fast enough to support the
| drilling rate, how will they do that?
|
| I'm also wondering about fluid flowrates. If they manage to drill
| down far enough to get to rock hot enough, how much fluid do they
| need to flow in order to get enough heat energy to the surface to
| operate these steam turbines? How big pipes do they need up and
| down to flow that rate? They also need to flow slow enough at
| depth to pick up lots of heat, and also fast enough through the
| mid and shallow depths to not lose all that heat to the local
| formation before it gets to the surface. For that matter, what's
| the heat flow rate from the magma into the rock at the depth they
| were drilling out - how much heat power can we really extract
| long-term with their setup? (I see jjk166 has addressed that, and
| that it is another serious issue).
|
| Don't get me wrong, geothermal is a really nice solution, and I
| wish all the luck in the world to anyone working on using it
| more. I just don't see any technology here that address the real
| issues with getting large-scale energy from geothermal.
| Mizza wrote:
| I think the idea is to use a traditional drilling technique to
| start the whole until they are past any gas pockets, then use
| the beams after that. The beam drilling doesn't require fluid,
| and the process itself creates a glass wall/lavatube on the
| side of the hole. They drill quite slowly relative to
| traditional drilling to evacuate the ash and fumes, but they
| don't need to replace the drill head so the overall process is
| faster.
| ufmace wrote:
| Still sounds rather dubious. I dunno about this whole thing
| about the beam creating a protective glass wall, but I'll
| give them a pass on that. Also on how they'd actually
| evacuate all the fluid and how they'd extract ash and fumes
| without it. The most critical part sounds like heat. It's
| very hot down there, and we're also presumably running
| megawatts of electrical power for this beam, which all goes
| to more heat. Ambient temps at those depths may be over 300 F
| / 150C, and that's before we pump in megawatts of extra heat
| with no way to extract it.
|
| I helped design and operate lots of oilfield electronics for
| those depths and temperatures. MTBF for the most hardened
| electronics we could get our hands on at temps over 150C was
| in the neighborhood of 200 hours max. Drilling slowly with
| much more sophisticated and unproven electronics, I expect
| they'll be dropping like flies if they ever work at all. And
| that's with extremely generous assumptions on the heat loads.
| MTBF of electronics drops exponentially as temperature goes
| up.
| azinman2 wrote:
| What the article doesn't address is the potential for
| earthquakes. I thought that was the limiting factor in a lot of
| deep geothermal drilling? Didn't Iceland run into this?
| giarc wrote:
| Perhaps you are thinking of fracking? In fracking they dig
| deep, horizontal wells and inject a water/sand mix into the
| well to fracture the rock. This method has resulted in
| measurable earthquakes.
| azinman2 wrote:
| This is one example of a geothermal system leading to
| earthquakes:
| https://grapevine.is/news/2020/11/16/earthquakes-linked-
| to-p...
| skagenpilot wrote:
| It depends on the rock formation the project is targeting. If
| one targets a steam reservoir or a sedimentary rock formation,
| generaly things are ok (save for this one case in Germany where
| Earth started to rise [0]). In case you target hot (dry) rock
| that you need to fracture to increase the heat exchange
| surface, then more often than not you are going to induce
| seismicity. It's been well studied in Alsace and some small
| induced earthquake was felt in Strasbourg and attributed to
| nearby geothermal developments [1].
|
| [0] https://m.dw.com/en/green-good-intentions-cause-chaos-in-
| two...
|
| [1] https://comptes-rendus.academie-
| sciences.fr/geoscience/artic...
| psadri wrote:
| Should we be concerned about cooling down the earth's core over
| the long term? I'd rather if we focus our efforts on renewables
| (basically anything that gets energy from sunlight - solar, wind,
| biomass)
| dan353hehe wrote:
| A similar question was asked in a another geothermal post.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32134418
|
| The tldr being that there is sufficient heat and we don't need
| to worry about running out even if we tapped into a significant
| portion of it.
| theptip wrote:
| Paging u/Animats, who had some interesting thoughts on a previous
| write-up of Quaise which had less info. I think he mentioned that
| gyrotrons had not been deployed for this use-case and that should
| make us skeptical because sticking one on the end of a multi-km
| long drill bit sounds Hard(tm).
|
| An adviser of Quaise (an MIT research engineer) claims:
|
| > "This will happen quickly once we solve the immediate
| engineering problems of transmitting a clean beam and having it
| operate at a high energy density without breakdown," explains
| Woskov, who is not formally affiliated with Quaise but serves as
| an advisor. "It'll go fast because the underlying technology,
| gyrotrons, are commercially available. You could place an order
| with a company and have a system delivered right now -- granted,
| these beam sources have never been used 24/7, but they are
| engineered to be operational for long time periods. In five or
| six years, I think we'll have a plant running if we solve these
| engineering problems. I'm very optimistic."
|
| Interested in what others think here. Seems overly optimistic to
| me.
|
| It's a really elegant solution though if it works; the idea of
| boring a hole in an existing coal plant and repurposing the old
| steam turbine & transmission equipment sounds like it could
| really lower the cost.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Re-using coal plant grid infrastructure is a good idea. So good
| that it's regularly done today, with big energy consumers like
| data centres setting up in those areas to save money.
|
| Battery systems and solar are other initiatives that are
| currently re-using the existing lines.
|
| However, while it makes a nice hook for a story, I'm dubious of
| any energy system that relies on that minor cost saving in
| established grids to be viable.
| u320 wrote:
| Grid connections, turbines and BoP equipment reused from a coal
| plant is not a minor cost saving.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Well, minor is a relative term, but regardless, my point is
| stronger the more the business case relies on this re-use.
|
| Solar can win on price with entirely new builds against
| already depreciated Coal plants. If you can't beat that
| price, then you are at best a complement to solar, and
| sticking solar, battery or synchronous condensors in the old
| coal plants might make more sense instead.
|
| See: Cost-benefit analysis of coal plant repurposing in
| developing countries
|
| https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3646443
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| I was looking for the reference to The Garin Death Ray book in
| comments, didn't found, so here it is:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Garin_Death_Ray
|
| The writer Aleksey Tolstoy came up with the idea of the laser-
| like machine that melts the rock in 1920s (maybe also influenced
| by H.G.Walls), when his science fiction book was first published.
| In this book a genial engineer Garin creates a beam that can be
| used both in mining (he wants to get the gold from the mantle, so
| uses American VC funding to set up a mining operation in Pacific)
| and as a weapon (he also wants to rule the world, so he uses his
| machine to destroy German and American competitors).
| ge96 wrote:
| The Core movie had a gatling laser miner to get to the core of
| the Earth.
| RosanaAnaDana wrote:
| Man MIT press and marketing is good.
| Ken_At_EM wrote:
| I really don't love being negative all the time, but this project
| is going nowhere.
|
| Boring rock in this way is a permanent "we're 5-10 years away
| research project."
|
| They've coupled a never ending research project with the idea of
| "hey there's already some power lines here" which is the smallest
| of efficiency gains in the big picture.
| hereme888 wrote:
| Idk why this sounds like another business scientist with a lofty
| idea that will never materialize.
| pseudolus wrote:
| The potential upside is incredibly high and the investment
| required to determine if the technology is so low that it's
| well worth pursuing.
| pqdbr wrote:
| I actually got really excited after reading the article, and
| the entire piece is about how "down to earth" (pun intended)
| the technology being developed here really is.
|
| They are going to great lengths to make it compatible with the
| existing power grid (just replacing the heat source for current
| generators), re-utilizing abandoned mines and all.
|
| So, would you care to elaborate why you think it would never
| materialize?
| jffry wrote:
| The article puts a lot of weight on the use of pre-existing
| technology in a new mode for making deep bore holes, and
| glosses over the engineering challenges that have yet to be
| solved ("transmitting a clean beam and having it operate at a
| high energy density without breakdown").
|
| I'm not equipped to judge how difficult those problems will
| be to overcome in practice. Obviously this would be very cool
| if it bears out, but it's hard to tell if it will.
| mgoetzke wrote:
| Always fascinated by all of these approaches. Though I still am
| fascinated, that all energy available to us is derived from
| gravity in one way or another.
| lostapathy wrote:
| And yet in spite of that, we don't actually know what gravity
| is!
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| >that all energy available to us is derived from gravity in one
| way or another.
|
| How so? Our major energy source is oil, where the energy comes
| from sunlight. And light's energy is from the electromagnetic
| fundamental force, not gravity.
| washbrain wrote:
| Where is the light generated?
|
| The sun. How did the sun form and why does it produce light?
| Gravity pulled some hydrogen into a ball, enough of it was
| there that gravity forced it to fuse.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Sure. Our energy is still derived from the photons released
| by the sun, even if the sun needed gravity to form. Gravity
| is necessary, but isn't the source of the energy.
| washbrain wrote:
| I mean, I guess. The fusion that causes photons doesn't
| happen without gravity though.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| And fusion happens through an interaction of the weak
| nuclear force. Finally, without the strong nuclear force
| there wouldn't even be hydrogen atoms for any of this to
| happen. All four are necessary, the energy we use comes
| from electromagnetism.
| 4ggr0 wrote:
| I have absolutely zero knowledge which would qualify me to talk
| about this topic. But based on what I know about our world and
| its ecosystems, I just can't imagine that drilling holes into
| earth and extracting it's heat can be a good idea when done in
| large scales.
|
| I could imagine that this seems reasonably safe right now, only
| for us to find out that it's actually a horrible thing to do. As
| has happened lots of times before. This is just a gut feeling and
| I'm not anti or whatever, it just feels...weird to me.
|
| No idea what the bad effects could be. Loss of internal heat,
| destabilization, sinkholes, loss of pressure, volcano eruptions
| back-firing through these holes. Admittedly, these examples sound
| like apocalypse movie scenarios. Which just validates my initial
| statement about me actually not knowing very much.
| tresqotheq wrote:
| > it just feels...weird to me.
|
| You are one person, and is sensible. Humanity as a whole, not
| so much so, sadly.
| sparsely wrote:
| I haven't done any maths but I bet the order's of magnitude in
| terms of energy flows are wildly different for human usage vs
| solar + geothermal flows.
| cassianoleal wrote:
| Wouldn't the availability of energy at this scale drive
| people and organisations to use it?
| 4ggr0 wrote:
| That could very well be, yes.
|
| Could also be like deforestation. Trees do die just like
| that, without our intervention. This benefits the forest. A
| couple of humans can chop wood in said forest and it will not
| affect it too much. But if whole cities and countries
| suddenly have to get their wood from this forest, it will
| disappear very fast.
|
| So maybe geothermal energy is not a risk when a couple of
| plants exist. But if humanity starts to rely on it too much
| and starts building geothermal plants like crazy, the damage
| could show. Maybe the damage only appears locally in the
| vicinity of these plants, which would still be worrying.
|
| I just want to disclose again that I am just spit-balling
| here.
| jjk166 wrote:
| The big issue with geothermal energy is that rock doesn't conduct
| heat very well. When you first bore a hole and pump some water
| down, it's easy to use the hot rocks to generate steam which can
| in turn drive a turbine, but doing so cools down the rock the
| water comes in contact with. Digging deeper, the rock starts out
| hotter, maybe it takes twice as long to exhaust the initial heat,
| but it's still going to happen in a matter of hours. Long term, a
| geothermal well can't extract heat faster than heat flows into
| the well from lower in the Earth. This heat flow rate is in the
| milliwatts per square meter range. Now with horizontal boring
| technology, a single drilling rig might be able to plumb a large
| area, but even if they got all the energy in a 10km radius, which
| is about 3 times what current technology is capable of, you're
| still looking at around 30 MW of thermal heat flux, which would
| at best produce about 20 MW of electricity. That's like 8 on
| shore windmills or a 100 acre solar plant. It's a little better
| given that the heat flow is continuous rather than intermittent,
| and multiple borehole locations can be connected by pipeline to a
| single generator station to keep capital costs down, but still
| this is not a lot of power.
|
| For context, to provide the electricity demand for kansas would
| require about 35% of the total geothermal flux into kansas. New
| Jersey's electricity demand is 7 times higher than what its
| geothermal heat flux could provide. For the whole US, electricity
| consumption is about 75% of geothermal heat flux if you ignore
| variations like the yellowstone hotspot.
|
| Geothermal certainly makes sense in certain locations where the
| heat flux is high and other power sources are problematic - for
| example iceland is probably the most ideal spot on earth. The
| technology for extracting geothermal power may also be useful for
| future efforts to control volcanism (though at this point such
| plans are highly speculative), so research is warranted. But it
| is unlikely to ever be more than a minor slice of the world's
| energy supply, and certainly anyone claiming to solve the issue
| by just digging deeper is selling snake oil.
| majou wrote:
| How about inter-seasonal heat storage, a la Drake's Landing?
|
| https://dlsc.ca
| kuprel wrote:
| What if you dig down deep enough to molten rock? Then you're
| aren't limited by heat conduction of the solid rock, but the
| heat convection of the magma
| [deleted]
| elil17 wrote:
| What makes the heat flux in iceland so high? Why doesn't
| drilling deeper get you to a similar heat flux?
| jjk166 wrote:
| Iceland is over a volcanic hotspot where hot rock from deep
| in the mantle is physically rising up, so the heat
| conductivity of the rock doesn't matter as much. It's like
| the difference between standing in a pool of water and being
| sprayed by a hose.
| elil17 wrote:
| That makes sense - thank you for helping me understand. If
| we drilled down low enough would convection in the mantel
| increase the availability of heat? I assume the issue is
| that that would be way too deep to dig, even with new tech
| like this?
| Retric wrote:
| Don't discount the actual energy stored in the rock or capacity
| factor. Granit has 790 J/kg per degree C and 1 cubic meter is
| ~2700 kg.
|
| So cooling 10 cubic kilometres of rock by say 50C releases 790J
| * 2700 * 1,000,000,000 * 50 * 10 = 10^18J or 600MW of heat over
| 50 years. At 33% efficiency your talking 200 MW of electricity
| for 50 years assuming 100% capacity factor and ignoring how
| fast it recharges.
|
| If it's a backup for solar and wind at 50% capacity factor then
| you could double the power output or double the lifespan.
| londons_explore wrote:
| I think your maths is off by 1000x... The specific heat
| capacity of Granite is 790 J/kg/C
|
| So replace megawatts with kilowatts in your answer... Still
| not nothing, but you're gonna have to have super cheap
| drilling to make it viable.
|
| EDIT: Ah - you made another mistake... there is 1e9 cubic
| meters in a cubic kilometer. So your original answer is
| correct again!
| worik wrote:
| But how do you access the heat of a cubic km of rock three
| km below ground?
|
| It would take more than a well. A lot of wells.
|
| I love this idea in general but it seems to me it will only
| work if you find water underground to carry the heat. I am
| not a geologist
| Retric wrote:
| Same basic idea as a well. When you extract water from
| underground it gets to your borehole through lot's of
| tiny cracks greatly increasing the surface area.
|
| In some places you can tap into an underground very hot
| aquifer. In others with sufficient permeability need only
| need to supply your own cold water. Worst case you also
| need to crack the rock:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_geothermal_system
| [deleted]
| adrianN wrote:
| My guess would be that this is a poor choice for backup
| energy for similar reasons that nuclear is a bad choice:
| drilling deep is rather expensive, so geothermal costs are
| mostly capex. That means you want to run the power plant at
| max output as much as possible to maximize profits. To use it
| as a backup plant for renewables however you would need to
| leave it mostly idle. Depending on how much renewable energy
| you have available you need full backup only for a few days
| to a few weeks per year.
| londons_explore wrote:
| I'm thinking the reverse... since the thermal conductivity
| of rock is low, you can either have the well operating at a
| very low level continuously, or you can have bursts of much
| higher output for a few hours/days with the same drilled
| boreholes.
|
| Obviously you will still have to pay the capex for the
| turbines and generators for whatever peak level you decide,
| but I'd guess they're a smallish chunk of the total budget.
| If you think energy prices will be more volatile in the
| future (more extreme climate means more peak-usage days,
| and more renewables means more days/hours with a shortfall
| in generation), then it makes sense to overbuild turbines
| so you can rake in the $$$'s in that 1-2 days per year when
| energy prices spike up 1000x.
| adrianN wrote:
| That is a very good point, thanks for bringing it up. I
| have changed my opinion.
| lazide wrote:
| Geothermal has serious issues if water flow is not kept
| constant - dissolved minerals in the borehole water are
| just waiting for an excuse to crystallize/precipitate,
| and it's already an issue at most active running plants,
| even when run continuously. Silica crystallization on
| heat exchangers, for instance, is a constant maintenance
| cost.
|
| Stopping the flow (and letting it cool in the pipes ) for
| any length of time or with any frequency could mean not
| being able to _ever_ start it again.
| loufe wrote:
| You could continue cycling the water, filtering out
| contaminants, without extracting heat from it.
| [deleted]
| nabakin wrote:
| Is granite common enough that far underground for this to
| make sense?
| Retric wrote:
| Granite is common, but other rocks have similar numbers.
| jjk166 wrote:
| The heat still needs to travel horizontally from this rock to
| your borehole. A 30 cm diameter borehole drilled 20 km deep
| with the bottom 12 km being used for heat collection would
| give you 12000 m^2 of surface area and an average temperature
| gradient of 135 Kelvin, which at a heat flux rate of 7
| W/m^2/K would only give you 13 MW thermal, or about 4.4 MW
| electric when the well is first drilled and about 3 MW after
| 50 years. Comparable to a single windmill. You can increase
| your surface area through more drilling and fracking, but
| that adds to cost and environmental concerns.
|
| As a battery for storing heat energy generated by other
| methods though it's great.
| joshjob42 wrote:
| Fracking with water (which is what geothermal would do) has
| pretty limited environmental concerns, and has enormous
| gains in increasing surface area and reach, so it almost
| certainly what we're going to end up doing. Iirc this is
| part of Quaise's plan: drill 20km down then frack the
| bottom to get a really big volume and surface area at those
| very high temperatures.
| [deleted]
| ok_dad wrote:
| You're saying we should pull heat out faster than it's
| replenished, but what do we do in 50 years? Didn't we learn
| our lesson from oil that we can't just kick the can down the
| road?
| nabakin wrote:
| Related comment thread. The OP is a former CTO of a Canadian
| geothermal company
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24854216
| hengheng wrote:
| Can I cool my house into the well during the summer? With
| surface heat abundant during the summer, I'd expect storing
| heat downstairs should make sense even if the efficiency of the
| underground reservoir is not exactly stellar.
| jjk166 wrote:
| This works very well. The low heat conduction of rock also
| means that without going too deep you get to a temperature
| that is almost constant year round, so you can cool your
| house in summer and heat in winter so long as you're not
| dumping absurd amounts of heat.
| btbuildem wrote:
| From what I understand, geothermal works both ways, yes
| shagie wrote:
| Look up Drake Landing Solar Community -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_Landing_Solar_Community
| // https://www.dlsc.ca/reports/swc2017-0033-Mesquita.pdf
|
| It is mainly addressing winter heating rather than summer
| cooling (the cooling degree days are rather minimal -
| https://okotoks.weatherstats.ca/charts/cdd-weekly.html //
| https://weatherspark.com/y/2404/Average-Weather-in-
| Okotoks-C... "Over the course of the year, the temperature
| typically varies from 13degF to 76degF and is rarely below
| -12degF or above 86degF.")
|
| That said, there's nothing saying that one can't use a heat
| pump to as a source of heat in the summer (which would also
| cool the house) in additional to other sources of thermal
| energy.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| I think this was marketed as "geoplutonic" power about a decade
| ago.
| downrightmike wrote:
| Bore hole open cycle loops probably wont be viable in areas
| that fracking is happening. Super hot steam mixed with methane
| doesn't sound like a good idea.
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| Why not? Sounds like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syngas
| theptip wrote:
| While I think this first-principle analysis is helpful, I fear
| it may be holding Quaise to too high a standard; their goal
| (AFAICT) is not to provide 100% of the energy needs of
| anywhere; it's a huge win if coal's 10-20% contribution of
| total power generation (or even just a substantial fraction of
| that) can be in-place replaced with a geothermal generator.
| Maybe this tech won't be cost-effective in 50 years as solar
| continues to get cheaper, but as a transitional bridge
| technology it could be incredibly impactful in the 10-20 year
| timeframe.
|
| Also, you didn't specify a depth for your calculation; won't
| the flux be higher the deeper you go (i.e. be proportional to
| the delta-T)? They are talking about going to 20km which as I
| understand it is WAY deeper than most geothermal systems
| contemplate. Their whole bet is predicated on the idea that
| with the gyrotron they can drill deeper since they don't need
| to mess with high-temp drill bits.
| bequanna wrote:
| > Maybe this tech won't be cost-effective in 50 years as
| solar continues to get cheaper
|
| As we replace base load with less reliable sources we need to
| come up with some way of expressing a penalty for
| availability. Does it matter how cheap solar is if it isn't
| available when we need it and storage is not practical?
| jjk166 wrote:
| > Also, you didn't specify a depth for your calculation;
| won't the flux be higher the deeper you go (i.e. be
| proportional to the delta-T)? They are talking about going to
| 20km which as I understand it is WAY deeper than most
| geothermal systems contemplate. Their whole bet is predicated
| on the idea that with the gyrotron they can drill deeper
| since they don't need to mess with high-temp drill bits.
|
| The depth doesn't matter at this scale. 20km deep the heat
| flux is about 0.3% higher. Things get complicated as you go
| down into the mantle, but at 20km you're still in the top
| part of the crust.
|
| The only thing drilling deep does is increase your max
| temperature, which increases efficiency, but eventually you
| hit the same limit as with any other steam generating plant
| where you can only handle steam that is so hot and so high
| pressure. With current technology, that limits the efficiency
| percentage to the low 40s. Maybe with some technological
| improvements this can go up a bit, but the carnot efficiency
| of a heat engine where the water is heated to the point it
| will decompose is 87%, and there is no way you're even going
| to get near that in a real plant, so increasing efficiency
| isn't really going to make a huge difference.
| [deleted]
| yayr wrote:
| > For context, to provide the electricity demand for kansas
| would require about 35% of the total geothermal flux into
| kansas. New Jersey's electricity demand is 7 times higher than
| what its geothermal heat flux could provide. For the whole US,
| electricity consumption is about 75% of geothermal heat flux if
| you ignore variations like the yellowstone hotspot.
|
| It would be great if you can provide a bit more details on
| those assumptions. Thanks
| jjk166 wrote:
| (Electric energy use per year * 1 year) / (Area * 100 mW/m^2
| * 60% thermal to electric conversion efficiency)
|
| In reality electricity capacity needs to meet peak demand,
| not average demand, the heat flux in continental crust is
| more like 65 mW/m^2, and the thermal to electric conversion
| efficiency is going to be closer to 40%, so the situation is
| actually much worse for geothermal, but maybe with the right
| technological developments and implementation you could get
| better performance.
| V__ wrote:
| > This will happen quickly once we solve the immediate
| engineering problems of transmitting a clean beam and having it
| operate at a high energy density without breakdown
|
| > [...] In five or six years, I think we'll have a plant running
| if we solve these engineering problems. I'm very optimistic.
|
| If only a few engineering problems have to be solved to make it
| work, then it will be ready in no time. It's not like those
| engineering problems are hard to solve or anything. That's why
| fusion works so great, cheap batteries are wide-spread and
| everyone has 100% effective solar-panels.
| bshipp wrote:
| While your sarcasm is noted, it's important to also note that
| engineering problems would never be solved until someone is
| allocating the necessary resources to solve them. I'm not a
| huge fan of gross theoretical speculation as being a savior for
| humanity, but I very much appreciate an innovator's optimism
| that redirecting known technologies to a novel application will
| result in benefits to humanity.
|
| Optimism is difficult to generate and easy to snuff out. We
| should be less inclined, as a society, to default to apathy.
| V__ wrote:
| Don't get me wrong, I'm rooting for them and all others
| trying to make such solutions happen. I just hate these
| handwavy breakthrough-like press releases which get published
| 100 times a day.
| bshipp wrote:
| Perfectly valid reaction, and one I personally share. It's
| a delicate balance to support innovative minds and ideas
| while simultaneously insulating oneself from baseless
| corporate marketing hype.
| falcolas wrote:
| I read this as skepticism about the timeline - which is 100%
| valid. Nobody's downplaying the validity of the research.
|
| But perhaps being optimistic about timelines is how you
| secure funding? Couldn't say.
| bshipp wrote:
| That is fair. I recently watched "We Were Apollo" and was
| struck by how incredibly audacious a manned moon landing
| really was in 1960. That sort of positive thinking is what
| we really need for fixing the climate crisis and elevating
| humanity beyond constant resource conflicts.
| falcolas wrote:
| It's worth remembering that national pride (and the
| beating that pride took when the Soviet Union beat us to
| space) is what drove the US to make such fast progress.
|
| That national pride does not exist as a driving force for
| addressing climate change. We, in many ways, don't even
| have a national consensus on _the need_ to address
| climate change.
| BbzzbB wrote:
| Didn't 2.5% of US's GDP go into that for 10 years?
|
| The guy's optimism is laudable but it's fair to be
| skeptical it'll just take 5-6 years.
| Offsite_camp wrote:
| Fascinating. In the most basic of philosophies, extracting
| conserved energy from our planet doesn't really fix the problem.
| Even in the best case the unintended and unknown consequences
| will destroy any predictions as to how something like this plays
| out. But as far as band-aids go this one sounds like it could us
| a whole lot more time...
| f6v wrote:
| It's just for a little while till we get fusion reactors up and
| running.
|
| /s
| russfink wrote:
| Can someone clarify the geochemistry for me? What happens to the
| rock vapor? Does it resolidify along the existing wall, or does
| it recondense into fine particulates, and are those particulates
| easier to remove than pieces of the solid rock itself?
|
| Then, can somebody clarify the physics for me- how far away can
| the target be from the energy source of the gyro-tron?
| Maximus9000 wrote:
| It's discussed a little bit in this video (starting at 8:37).
| It sounds like it creates a glassy coating on the drill hole
| wall
|
| https://youtu.be/g8sjdOjNxIE?t=519
| benevol wrote:
| That's nice. But there's an even easier, cleaner and even mobile
| source of "free" energy - plus, it's fully open-sourced (no
| patents, fees, limitations, etc.): https://www.KryonEngine.org
| ovi256 wrote:
| The well drilling using microwave lasers, generated using those
| gyrotrons, certainly sounds novel enough. It will need a R&D
| program to bring it up to a mature tech level.
|
| The concept of reusing existing coal plants sounds clever.
| pseudolus wrote:
| Interview with Carlos Araque, the founder of Quaise Energy, on
| the podcast "How I Built This" with Guy Raz:
|
| https://wondery.com/shows/how-i-built-this/episode/10386-hib...
| daltont wrote:
| I remember seeing bits of an old movie when I was young that used
| this has a plot device: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059065/
| h2odragon wrote:
| More geothermal:
| https://austinvernon.site/blog/geothermalnextsteps.html
| nsm wrote:
| The article is quite skeptical of Quaise: "While it is exciting
| to see the interest in geothermal, much of the effort leaves me
| skeptical.
|
| Quaise is staffed heavily by former Schlumberger employees.
| Schlumberger is known for being too expensive and impractical
| in many of its business units for shale. It is on-brand that
| they are building a laser-like drilling technology! Quaise
| deserves credit for correctly identifying the challenges in
| geothermal economics and pursuing a path with a greater than
| zero chance of success. But many of their assumptions are off
| base. The large, bureaucratic companies you work with at
| Schlumberger often do things like limit trip speed to 500'/hr.
| One time tripping fast caused a blowout by swabbing the hole,
| so no rig contracted by the company can trip fast even if the
| blowout risk is low. Smaller companies are ripping out of the
| hole at 4000'/hr. Tripping in granite is like tripping in a
| cased hole. Most companies will push the speed to the physical
| limits of the crew and rig. And even at 50,000' depths, on-
| bottom drilling will dominate total time (assuming a high-
| temperature motor is available). Both PDC bits and motors
| suffer from the vibration drilling in hard rock causes. There
| is a decent chance that PDC and elastomer-free motor assemblies
| will see longer runs at deep depths because the rock is more
| ductile."
|
| I have no background in energy at all, so I'm not qualified to
| comment on this at all. Just leaving it here as a counterpoint
| to the original article.
| alfiedotwtf wrote:
| Anyone else find it weird that there have been a flood of MIT
| links on the front page the past few days?
| 3pt14159 wrote:
| They've always been around and fairly frequent. Pretty high
| quality source for hacker related stuff.
|
| Check out this, for example:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=news.mit.edu&next=220...
| alexpotato wrote:
| Is there a guide to how to use some of the features of HN
| like the search in the link above?
| Agamus wrote:
| There is a guide to the API here:
| https://github.com/HackerNews/API
| 3pt14159 wrote:
| There is, but I can't remember the link, haha. You just
| kinda learn things over the years. This one can be reached
| by clicking on the domain name of a linked article, so it's
| easy to remember how to get there.
| BbzzbB wrote:
| Specifically for search, might as well use hn.algolia.com
| than figure out how to use HN's hidden(ish) API.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I suspect it's a chain reaction. Someone (from here) follows
| one link, then starts clicking around, and finds more
| interesting stuff, and so on.
| zaphar wrote:
| MIT produces interesting engineering content. They've been a
| regular on the HN frontpage for as long as I've been coming
| here which is a pretty long time. Why would it be weird?
| Communitivity wrote:
| TANSTAAFL... If we tap the energy from the molten core, part of
| the system that both drives/stabilizes the rotation of the
| planet, and provides the magnet generating our solar radiation
| shield (van allen belts), then I think we can expect eventually
| to face rotation/stabilization degradation.
|
| Of course, eventually might be a million years from now. I
| remember climate change deniers saying that climate change might
| produce a visible effect by 2400, and by then we could fix it.
| Now look where we are with that.
|
| There's also fracking. To tap the core we probably need to do
| deep drilling, with a lot of the problems that drilling for oil
| or fracking cause, except possibly magnified because of the
| depths we're talking about.
|
| It is much easier, and safer, to tap solar energy. If we pour
| research into solar efficiency and house-scale batteries, we
| could provide all of the electricity needed for U.S. homes and
| have enough to sell to Canada and Mexico with only 16k sq miles
| (the size of Nellis AFB).
|
| "A square mile, 5,280 feet times 5,280 feet equals 27,878,400
| square feet. Divided by 15 sq.ft. per module, we can fit
| 1,858,560 modules per square mile. At 0.6266 kilowatt-hours per
| module per day, our square mile will deliver 1,164,574 kWh per
| day on average, or 425,069,510 kWh per year. Back to our goal of
| 4,000,000,000,000 kWh, divided by 425,069,510 kWh per year per
| square mile, it looks like we need about 9,410 square miles of
| surface to meet the electrical needs of the U.S. That's a square
| area a bit less than 100 miles on a side. This is a bit over half
| of the approximate 16,000 square miles currently occupied by the
| Nevada Test Site and the surrounding Nellis Air Force Range." [1]
|
| [1] https://www.terrawatts.com/PV-production.html
| rdsubhas wrote:
| TANSTAAFL applies to batteries. There is no viable path known
| to produce multi-day batteries to cover everyone on the planet.
| Solar & wind is great. But we're not solving the climate crisis
| without baseload power generation and distribution. All hands
| on deck.
| adrianN wrote:
| Just use hydrogen if you can't build enough batteries. Make
| it into methane or ammonia if you have trouble storing it.
| causi wrote:
| Global energy usage is 15TW. The earth's core currently
| dissipates 47TW through passive cooling. The core has a mass
| 528,000 times that of the atmosphere.
| sophacles wrote:
| Just a nit: fracking problems aren't from the depth of the
| drilling. In fracking (hydraulic fracturing) they drill a hole
| then push high pressure fluid into the hole in such a way as to
| cause large volumes of rock to break apart. For something like
| this, you'd want the hole to be stable and not tear apart all
| the rock around it, like in a traditional well.
| simias wrote:
| But if we convert a lot of solar energy into electricity
| instead of letting it turn into heat that could usher a new ice
| age.
|
| That's about as reasonable as your point about tapping enough
| heat from Earth's core to disturb the magnetic field.
| adrianN wrote:
| The electricity will eventually be turned into heat too.
| Since PV panels are pretty dark, in most places where you put
| them they will increase the amount of heat generated, because
| less light is reflected back to space.
| eloff wrote:
| It all gets turned into heat anyway. Whether at the solar
| panel or in the electrical transmission process, inverters,
| or the actual devices being powered.
| u320 wrote:
| AFAIK they aren't planning to do any fracking, and it's not
| obvious that it is even possible at these depths. And the
| drilling is far less disruptive as it is given that it is done
| at atmospheric pressure (no drilling fluid).
|
| As for your second point, batteries are not cheap. Nowhere near
| cheap. We need solutions not pipe dreams.
| azinman2 wrote:
| Solar is much more limited by resources and manufacturing
| ability, likely would cost a lot more than this just in
| finished product, will take up a ton of land (very expensive),
| works much better in certain areas than others, plus the still
| unsolved problem of grid-scale storage for at night. You also
| need to still build the equipment to hook it up to power lines;
| if you can retrofit existing power plants into something that
| works 24/7, then that is a much better alternative.
|
| I think the reality is we need a "yes and" approach, not a "no
| but".
| rossdavidh wrote:
| I don't think I even need to do the math on this, to
| demonstrate that our total energy usage is many orders of
| magnitude smaller than what would be required to cause the
| problem you're discussing.
|
| Solar is great, and growing fast, but for fairly obvious
| reasons works better as part of a multifaceted solution than as
| a single source.
| adrianN wrote:
| Pumping the energy out of the Yellowstone supervolcano was
| proposed to lower the risk of an eruption. That seems like a
| win-win to me.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Just as long as the math is correct and it doesn't turn out
| to have the opposite effect..
| soheil wrote:
| For every few miles you drill the temperature rises by 370F.
| The closest we've ever come to drilling was with the Japanese
| scientific drilling ship Chikyu [1]. It had to stop because of
| extreme pressure collapsing the walls of the drilling hole
| after just 7km. Just putting it into perspective, the amount of
| heat trapped inside Earth is immense.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiky%C5%AB
| chinathrow wrote:
| > It is much easier, and safer, to tap solar energy. If we pour
| research into solar efficiency and house-scale batteries, we
| could provide all of the electricity needed for U.S. homes and
| have enough to sell to Canada and Mexico with only 16k sq miles
| (the size of Nellis AFB).
|
| A million times this.
|
| We have solutions at our hands, but we're not willing enough to
| use them
| qayxc wrote:
| Hm. Annual PV module production in 2020 was ~180 GW [0]; peak
| power per 1m2 is on the order of 200W, meaning roughly the
| equivalent of 1000 km2 or ~386 sq. miles or thereabouts of PV
| modules.
|
| Covering 16,000 sq. miles would take about 40 years of the
| entire global PV module production - a few years less if
| adjusted for production increase.
|
| Doesn't sound very realistic to me, especially considering
| infrastructure, storage solutions(!!!), and
| maintenance/replacement have to be added on top of that.
|
| I'm all for clean and sustainable power generation, but a
| little diversity (wind, nuclear, geothermal, biomass, tidal
| power, hydropower, etc.) seems to be more realistic and
| actually achievable.
|
| [0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/668764/annual-solar-
| modu...
| rsutherland wrote:
| There is no possible way for humans to ever extract enough
| geothermal energy in any of our lifetimes, expanded out to
| 100,000 lifetimes, to ever affect the geothermal reserves of
| the earth. You are making things up to fit you argument that
| solar is better.
| u320 wrote:
| There was this idea going around that solar power would cause
| global warming, since a solar panel is typically warmer than
| whatever was there before it was installed. But the idea
| turns out to be bullshit, the warming effect is tiny compared
| to what the equivalent co2 from fossil fuels would cause.
|
| The lesson is: Always. Do. The. Math. First.
| thfuran wrote:
| You can't really do the math until you have an idea of what
| you want to calculate.
| falcolas wrote:
| I've wondered as well about the effect of pumping all of that
| heat - energy - out of the core and into (effectively) space.
|
| Best case, our use falls in the .003% mentioned in another
| thread of heat that contributes to warming the Earth's crust,
| and the surface is that .003% cooler.
|
| The worst case, though, is we start slowing (maybe even
| stopping) the flows of molten rock as it's cooled down. I don't
| even have the beginnings of a background to comment - does
| anybody?
| BurningFrog wrote:
| I'd expect we'd use this energy source for only 50-100 years,
| before tech & science developments makes it obsolete.
|
| So it's the wrong time to worry about effects after that.
| eloff wrote:
| I think geothermal can be part of a solution, as can solar, and
| nuclear, and wind, etc. We need all hands on deck here. I think
| you're not wrong to worry about cooling the interior of the
| Earth too much, but that's a much slower problem we would have
| plenty of time to adapt to. Millions of years is longer than
| humans have been a species. Given all the other very viable
| energy options out there, I don't see us overdoing it on the
| geothermal front. Global warming on the other hand is going to
| fuck us up over the next century.
|
| One thing I would like to see happen is tap the energy at
| Yellowstone in a big way. We _want_ to cool that down before it
| blows up in our faces.
| ryan_j_naughton wrote:
| Firstly, the energy from geothermal is NOT from the core or
| even remotely that deep of an energy source. It is from
| potassium and other elements doing radioactive decay in the
| crust and upper mantle.
|
| Nonetheless, it is worth putting some numbers to gain
| perspective:
|
| 1. World electricity demand was 24K terawatt hours in 2019 [1]
|
| 2. Mt St Helens volcano released 24 megatons of energy when it
| erupted [2]. That is 28 terawatt hours.
|
| 3. Thus, you would be adding 824 equivalent Mt St Helen
| eruptions a year in terms of additional energy extraction from
| the earth. Which sounds like a lot, but it really isn't for
| several reasons.
|
| 4. In particular, the earth is already radiating substantially
| than this amount of energy to the surface. "Because of the
| internal heat, the Earth's surface heat flow averages 82 mW/m2
| which amounts to a total heat of about 42 million
| megawatts."[3]. That is 42 terawatts of continual energy loss
| from the crust/upper mantle to the surface. That is 16 times as
| much electricity as humanity uses -- and it is already be
| radiated to the surface.
|
| My guess is that if we started extracting this from 20KM down
| and bringing that heat to the surface, then it would cause some
| increase in energy radiated to the surface, but it would also
| be concentrating that energy radiated to the surface at the
| location of the plant and potentially decreasing that energy
| from its slow radiation path to the surface through the rock
| above it.
|
| Either way that potassium and uranium is going to decay. Either
| way, that heat will eventually make it to the surface and
| eventually be lost to space. The question is whether we can
| stand in the middle of that process and capture it for use. Our
| using of that heat and turning it into electricity --
| ultimately still turns into heat and is radiated to space. It
| just is turned into heat when it is loses on the electricity
| transmission grid, when it is used to heat a house, when it is
| used to move a car, etc.
|
| TANSTAAFL really doesn't intersect with the reality that stars
| burn and the earth decays whether we use the energy or not.
| Entropy comes for us all. We are just trying to be a step in
| the ultimate transition of all this energy to the heat death of
| the universe.
|
| [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/280704/world-power-
| consu... [2] https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/en
| ergy/energ.... [3]
| https://www.worldenergy.org/assets/images/imported/2013/10/W...
| donatj wrote:
| I'm generally curious after reading this, what effect does our
| molten core have on our ambient surface temperature? I can't
| imagine much, but it can't be nil, and I genuinely have no idea.
| icegreentea2 wrote:
| Wiki says it's basically nil:
|
| > The flow of heat from Earth's interior to the surface is
| estimated at 47+-2 terawatts
|
| And
|
| > Despite its geological significance, Earth's interior heat
| contributes only 0.03% of Earth's total energy budget at the
| surface, which is dominated by 173,000 TW of incoming solar
| radiation
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_internal_heat_budget
| donatj wrote:
| Thank you so much for the link, there is a lot in here that
| is genuinely fascinating!
|
| For instance heat from the surface "thus penetrates only
| several tens of centimeters on the daily cycle and only
| several tens of meters on the annual cycle"
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| This is why ground source heat pumps are suprisingly
| effective. You're drawing on the yearly solar inflow to the
| ground, at a depth where the temperature is quite stable,
| due to accumulating and averaging over years.
| DLTADragonHawk wrote:
| My curiosity in using things like heat pumps is that what
| happens when you move too much of that heat energy away.
| The heat might be doing nothing but, it has been there
| for a long time. At what point is too much heat displaced
| to the surface and what is the outcome of that?
| antisthenes wrote:
| You can read about what happened to the London
| underground over the years.
|
| Except the process has been sort of reversed: there was
| heat being introduced into the deep layers of clay and
| rock.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Underground_cooling
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| For them to actually work the energy needs to be
| replaced, flowing from the hot areas to the (relatively)
| cold areas, mostly coming from the sun.
|
| If you have a small area and continually pump the heat
| out then you end up with the inside of a freezer, which
| uses the same tech for exactly that purpose, but also
| intentionally insulates to prevent the heat getting back
| in.
| aronhegedus wrote:
| It's probably similar to the fact that wind turbines don't stop
| wind around the world :D
| soco wrote:
| They actually do, a bit:
| https://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-05/fyi-do-
| wind-f...
| pantulis wrote:
| Thats for sure but, where does that energy come from? I would
| say it comes from the earths own rotation, would this
| infinitesimally slow the earth rotation?
|
| Anyway this is fascinating stuff!
| lxgr wrote:
| Solar radiation, ultimately (wind heats air, air expands,
| that creates a pressure differential which ultimately
| caused wind).
|
| Maybe you're thinking of tidal power plants? Tides are
| gravitationally caused, and as far as I know tapping into
| them infinitesimally changes Earth's rotation (and to some
| extent probably also Earths and the Moon's orbit).
| pantulis wrote:
| Well I was thinking of the geothermal energy that Quaise
| is pretending to extract.
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| Geothermal energy comes from a mixture of radioactive
| decay and from gravity pressuring the Earth's core into
| gradually solidifying over the course of billions of
| years.
| pantulis wrote:
| I also read that Quaise value proposal is drilling a 20km
| deep hole but once you reach there, how do you transform
| that into usable energy? Push water to extract vapor?
| u320 wrote:
| Yes pump water down, extract supercritical steam coming
| out and then just use a regular turbine.
| pantulis wrote:
| Just curious, is this process performed in alternate
| phases (pump water, wait for the vapor ) or is it done at
| the same time with different pipes in the same hole?
| bshipp wrote:
| I'm also curious how they would deal with rock
| deformation as it reaches the point of becoming less
| solid and more squishy. There would need to be a
| mechanism to maintain hole integrity post-drilling.
|
| To your question, I'm wondering if they simply pump down
| water and extract resulting steam once it reaches the
| point of vaporization? The steam condensers and
| everything else are already built on-site for coal
| generation.
|
| One difficulty would be handling any accumulated minerals
| that got into the steam loop from interaction with the
| rock in the hole. Unlike traditional closed-loop steam
| generator, an open system would pick up contaminants and
| eventually cause scaling.
| deltarholamda wrote:
| >stop wind around the world Probably not, but do they affect
| local micro-climates? I have the same question about large-
| scale solar farms.
|
| I've always assumed it's been looked at, so I don't worry
| about it particularly, but I never see anybody talk about it.
| MrsPeaches wrote:
| As another spin-off of this, I've always wondered how much
| tidal energy we can extract before we start messing up the
| moon's orbit.
| treeman79 wrote:
| We lose energy from gravitational waves being emitted from
| the earth spinning around the sun. Causing earth to move
| toward the sun.
|
| The amount lost is sufficient to power a small toaster oven.
| smilespray wrote:
| Where can you buy one of these toaster ovens?
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Does it have a USB port?
| revolvingocelot wrote:
| Can't you read?! There's just one!
|
| ...and it's kept in the basement of the BIPM, right next
| to the International Prototype of the Pop-Tart(r).
| Ope_Welp wrote:
| Fantastic. Geothermal power has such potential. "The amount of
| heat within 10 000 meters of the earth's surface is estimated to
| contain 50 000 times more energy than all oil and gas resources
| worldwide." - The International Renewable Energy Agency
| engineer_22 wrote:
| How do they propose to remove the vaporized material from the
| bore hole?
| rexreed wrote:
| My understanding of the term vaporization means turning a solid
| into a vapor... so that implies there's nothing substantial
| left after vaporization that can't be otherwise removed simply
| through ventilation.
| engineer_22 wrote:
| My understanding is they propose to excite the material with
| electromagnetic waves until it undergoes a phase shift, solid
| to liquid to gas.
|
| So then they have superheated gaseous rock in the bottom of
| the bore hole, how do they get it out? Conservation of mass:
| it must _go_ somewhere.
|
| Ventilation isn't so simple. The gaseous rock will condense,
| then harden on the walls of the ventilation tube. Or, maybe
| it reacts with the materials of your down-hole equipment.
| digdugdirk wrote:
| The best part about vaporization is that there's nothing left
| to remove.
| engineer_22 wrote:
| I can't tell if you're serious or not.
|
| If that's true, they're proposing to convert mass to energy?
| [deleted]
| TomGullen wrote:
| A great video on this:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8sjdOjNxIE
| jmyeet wrote:
| If I read this right, this is still the basic geothermal
| structure and idea but is really an improvement in drilling?
|
| Geothermal seems to be limited by finding suitable places for it,
| which is generally where you only need to build fairly shallow
| wells. Building deep wells is expensive. If you can build deeper
| wells faster and cheaper then it opens it up to move areas.
|
| Is that correct?
|
| Better and cheaper drilling has way more applications thatn
| building geothermal wells. I mean we need to build tunnels all
| the time. Cheaper drilling probably has significant applications
| for the oil and gas industry too.
|
| So if that's true, why the focus on geothermal? I mean I support
| research into renewables but it's a whole lot easier if, say, you
| can get the oil and gas industry to pay for your R&D,
| effectively.
|
| My understanding is that geothermal energy production is still
| pretty low.
|
| It's also worth noting that boiling water to steam and turning a
| turbine has inbuilt costs that you can't escape. There's only one
| power source that directly creates energy and that's solar.
| Additionally, solar has no moving parts (other than facing PV
| pannels towards the Sun, optionally).
| danans wrote:
| > So if that's true, why the focus on geothermal? I mean I
| support research into renewables but it's a whole lot easier
| if, say, you can get the oil and gas industry to pay for your
| R&D, effectively.
|
| I believe that is what they are doing, with initial projects
| being related to gas exploration, and using that to refine the
| technology.
| u320 wrote:
| I've been following Quaise for a while and I have never seen
| any mention of such a plan. Oil and gas is into vertical
| drilling and fracking, which these people have little use for
| so the applications aren't that similar really.
|
| There are other geothermal startups doing more O&G-like
| drilling though.
| danans wrote:
| The CEO mentioned it during a recent interview, I think
| this one:
|
| https://www.woodmac.com/news/opinion/the-interchange-
| recharg...
| [deleted]
| Nomentatus wrote:
| Note the one of those limited, presently suitable areas in the
| US is Yellowstone: a geographically immense caldera. But if
| this tech proves cheap enough, as it may in time, we'll be able
| tap geothermal anywhere rather than pay to transport or
| transmit the energy. That's what's notable about the tech:
|
| "Houde began his talk with a quote from the Department of
| Energy's 2019 Geovision report, an analysis of the geothermal
| industry in the United States: 'Supercritical resources can be
| found everywhere on Earth by drilling deep enough...Drilling to
| this depth is financially prohibitive with existing
| technology...Economic production of supercritical resources
| will require the development of entirely new classes of
| drilling technologies and methods.'
|
| Quaise is working to that end."
|
| https://bioengineer.org/quaise-inc-drilling-technology-could...
|
| Here's hoping the pudding will prove palatable.
| giantg2 wrote:
| My biggest question is whether this will be the next climate
| crisis. There have been recent articles about how the earth's
| geology is cooling faster than expected. There are questions
| around if our planet will become a dead planet as it cools. It
| seems like speeding this up could be an issue, especially given
| how little we know.
| idontwantthis wrote:
| Can you link an article?
| doikor wrote:
| Geothermal heat provides less than 0.1% of the total heat of
| our planet. It is pretty much all just the sun. So as long as
| the output of the sun does not change much it won't be a
| problem (so will have to wait billions of years and even then
| sun will actually get bigger and hotter first before getting
| colder)
| NineStarPoint wrote:
| The issue is that when the core cools too much it will cease
| to be magnetic, and then solar radiation strips the
| atmosphere.
|
| But it's not a major concern, in this case faster still means
| billion year time scales.
| u320 wrote:
| The planet is expected to still be mostly molten by the
| time the sun swallows it, so there is a huge margin. I
| think people underestimate just how much energy there is
| down there.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| And it's being replenished by nuclear decay. It's not
| just the original heat from the compression/collisions of
| material when the planet formed.
| mahkeiro wrote:
| Venus doesn't have an internal magnetic field and has a
| thicker atmosphere than earth.
| lrem wrote:
| Won't Earth be engulfed in the first phase? If that's the
| case, Solar gasses will also drag down our orbital velocity
| and Earth will fall towards the core. So it won't be around
| for the second phase.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| Total human energy consumption is 7.8e20 joules[0]. The heat
| content of the earth is 1e31 joules[1]. That is a difference of
| 100 billion times. Safe to say there is not going to be a
| problem for a very long time.
|
| [0]: https://www.theworldcounts.com/challenges/climate-
| change/ene...
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_gradient
| Karellen wrote:
| Yeah, but it looks like humans are doubling the amount of
| energy produced/consumed per year every 30-40 years.[0] If we
| say it takes 150 years to increase the amount of energy
| consumed by a factor of 10, then we'll be consuming 100
| billion times more energy than we do today in well under
| 2,000 years.
|
| Compared to a human life, that is a very long time. Compared
| to the time it's going to take for the sun to expand and
| swallow the earth (which others in the thread are doing), it
| really isn't.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_supply_and_con
| sum...
| Invictus0 wrote:
| There were also roughly 50% fewer people on Earth 40 years
| ago. The population is expected to peak and then decline in
| much less than 2000 years.
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