[HN Gopher] AltaRock Energy Melts Rock with Millimeter Waves for...
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AltaRock Energy Melts Rock with Millimeter Waves for Geothermal
Wells (2020)
Author : rfreytag
Score : 19 points
Date : 2022-10-11 17:35 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (spectrum.ieee.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (spectrum.ieee.org)
| chatterhead wrote:
| "AltaRock estimates that just 0.1 percent of the planet's heat
| content could supply humanity's total energy needs for 2 million
| years."
|
| Ummm.. What?
| riffic wrote:
| one secret the fossil fuel companies don't want you to know!
| simonh wrote:
| There's a lot of heat down there, and more is continually being
| generated through radioactive decay and tidal forces.
| TrevorJ wrote:
| It seems pants on head crazy that a mere 20 feet or so below the
| ground it's a livable and pretty comfortable temperature year
| round, virtually worldwide. And yet we spend an enormous amount
| of money, time and energy heating and then cooling our living
| spaces by almost any other means possible. Yes, the occasional
| home has geothermal, but the fact that it's still the exception
| baffles me. Heck, if you have a well or even city water then you
| are already piping 55-degree fluid into your living space and a
| lot of the complicated work is already done.
|
| I get that there are some tough engineering challenges involved,
| but as a species we don't seem all that interested in solving
| them relative to the effort we've put into many other endeavors.
| retox wrote:
| I'd say the overwhelming population of the earth does not want
| to live underground like a worm. The first level down might be
| OK for some if they still had access to natural sunlight, but
| everyone further down, especially to the depths that we would
| need to move tower blocks underground, would have a miserable
| existence.
| TrevorJ wrote:
| We don't need to put the living space underground in order to
| leverage the thermal mass for heating or cooling.
| ianai wrote:
| I'd support some directed project to figuring out how to do
| geothermal at scale and most efficiently/effectively. Call it
| long term infrastructure investment.
| Wulfmage wrote:
| My partner has an idea on how to conduct this process using
| our form of cheap energy. please send us you address at email
| morphle at ziggo dot nl
| londons_explore wrote:
| When you can just burn coal/gas/oil to heat and cool your house
| and say 'la la la' loud enough to not hear the environment
| dying around you, it really is the best option.
| Gravityloss wrote:
| Emissions costs are a solution to that. Sadly, some countries
| are not part of these agreements.
| simonh wrote:
| That's easy to say, but nobody is stoping you or anyone else
| that thinks that way from building yourselves a home deep
| underground. There's no real engineering challenge, we know how
| to dig very big, very deep pits, the problem is the costs are
| astronomical relative to conventional housing. Not to mention
| the huge energy cost and thus carbon footprint of that kind of
| construction.
|
| It's conceivable those costs might be reduced, maybe the Boring
| Company will find a solution, but the fact is it involves
| moving an awful lot of very heavy material.
| TrevorJ wrote:
| Leveraging thermal energy != living underground, there are
| lots of ways to exchange the thermal energy without needing
| to dig a living space, etc.
| wcoenen wrote:
| > _Yes, the occasional home has geothermal_
|
| The use of the word geothermal like that feels like a silly
| marketing thing to me. The "geothermal" you are referring to
| here, is just a ground source heat pump. A ground source heat
| pump is drawing heat from the ground, exploiting the huge (but
| not unlimited) thermal mass of the soil. That thermal mass is
| the same reason it has a stable temperature year round.
|
| Ground source heat pumps do not use geothermal energy, i.e. the
| 25-30 degC/km heat gradient of the Earth. AltaRock is actually
| trying to use geothermal energy. These are two very different
| concepts, so we should avoid conflating them, and use different
| words to refer to them.
| TrevorJ wrote:
| I agree the term is technically incorrect but it's still used
| as such in the building/architecture industry AFAIK.
| Atheros wrote:
| It's possible for an entire industry to engage in fraud. We
| need not assist though.
| tomcam wrote:
| As a guy with poor understanding of construction techniques I
| sure as hell agree. Looked into it for my farm. I can't build
| much underground due to a very high water table.
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