Green Britain: geologist explains how geothermal site works
Quaise Energy, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) spin-out company, is working to commercialize the research of plasma research engineer Dr. Paul Woskov. They plan to use a Soviet-era invention called a gyrotron to vaporize rock and form the world’s deepest holes from which colossal amounts of geothermal energy can be harvested by pumping cool water to Earth and turning it into steam. to make. Gyrotrons, normally used to heat materials in nuclear fusion experiments, generate electromagnetic waves of high frequency and intensity by resonating electrons in a strong magnetic field.
dr. Woskov – who serves as an independent advisor to Quaise – said gyrotrons “have not gained much prominence in the general scientific community.
“But those of us in fusion research understood that they were very powerful beam sources.”
They are, he noted, “like lasers, but in a different frequency range.
“I thought, why don’t we direct these powerful beams, instead of into fusion plasma, into rock and vaporize the hole?”
A gyrotron (like left) could drill deep holes in the Earth to tap geothermal energy (Image: Getty Images/Creative Commons/I2ho7p)
Pictured: Dr. Woskov poses with some of the rock samples he has melted holes through in lab tests (Image: MIT)
While interest in renewables has skyrocketed in recent decades, geothermal energy has largely remained out of the game.
This is because the implementation of geothermal installations is generally limited to those regions where natural heat sources exist at shallow depths up to 120 meters below the Earth’s surface – within the practical range of conventional drilling technology.
While physical drilling at deeper depths may struggle, Dr. Woskov believes the emissions from a gyrotron could be used to vaporize a hole in the depths instead.
At present Dr. Woskov only managed to make tiny holes in his lab — but the team hopes to create a trail ten times deeper later this year thanks to access to a more powerful gyrotron.
Then they can try increasing their target depth by another tenfold, after which they’ll have to prove they can successfully flush out the rock vapor at such a depth — a feat, the team said, which the U.S. Department of Energy is interested in.
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Conventional geothermal plants (shown) can only be built in shallow heat locations (Image: Getty Images)
Pictured: An illustration of how a geothermal power plant works by using underground heat (Image: Getty Images)
Progress, said Dr. Woskov, “will happen quickly if we solve the immediate technical problems of emitting a clean beam and have it without interference with a high energy density.
“It’s moving fast because the underlying technology, gyrotrons, is commercially available.
You could place an order with a company and have a system delivered now – admittedly, these bundle sources have never been used 24/7, but they are designed to be operational for long periods of time.
“I think we’ll have a factory up and running in five or six years if we fix these technical issues. I am very optimistic.”
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Progress, Dr. Woskov said, ‘will happen quickly once we resolve the immediate technical issues’ (Image: MIT)
The founders of Quaise – Carlos Araque and Matt Houde – have set themselves the ambitious goal to start harvesting thermal energy from a pilot well by the year 2026.
The engineers have their sights on an abandoned coal plant in upstate New York to begin testing their energy harvesting concept.
The plant has the advantage of already having both an intact turbine and transmission lines that are connected to the grid and that they can use.
The pilot well, the team explained, should reach surrounding rock temperatures of some 932F — similar to the temperatures used by fossil fuel-fired power plants.
And if the company can operate this one power plant as a geothermal facility, Quaise said, the process could be applied to most coal and gas-fired power plants.
Mr Houde said: “If we can drill up to 20 kilometers” [12.4 miles]we have access to these super hot temperatures in more than 90 percent of locations around the world.
Quaise firmly believes that the rapid transformation of the world’s energy systems will be critical to avoiding the worst-case scenarios resulting from global warming.
Mr Houde said: “Huge gains have been made in renewables over the past ten years.
“But the big picture today is that we are not moving fast enough to reach the milestones we need to mitigate the worst impacts of climate change.”
Deep geothermal, he concluded, “is an energy source that can be scaled anywhere and that has the ability to tap into a large workforce in the energy industry to easily repackage their skills for a completely carbon-free energy source. “