Energy answers sought in Earth's crust

The Washington Times ^ | August 13, 2007 | Eliane Engeler and Alexander G. Higgins

[neverdem]

BASEL, Switzerland (AP)

When tremors started cracking walls and bathroom tiles in this Swiss city on the Rhine, engineers knew they had a problem.

"The glass vases on the shelf rattled, and there was a loud bang," recalled Catherine Wueest, a tea-shop owner. "I thought a truck had crashed into the building."

But the magnitude 3.4 tremor on the evening of Dec. 8 was no ordinary act of nature: It had been accidentally triggered by engineers drilling deep into the Earth's crust to tap its inner heat and thus break new ground — literally — in the world's search for new sources of energy.

Basel was wrecked by an earthquake in 1365, and no tremor, man-made or other, is to be taken lightly. After more, slightly smaller tremors followed, Basel authorities told Geopower Basel to put its project on hold.

But the power company hasn't given up. It's in a race with a firm in Australia to be the first to generate power commercially by boiling water on the rocks 3 miles underground.

On paper, the Basel project looks fairly straightforward: Drill down, shoot cold water into the shaft and bring it up again superheated and capable of generating enough power through a steam turbine to meet the electricity needs of 10,000 households, and heat 2,700 homes.

Scientists say this geothermal energy — clean, quiet and virtually inexhaustible — could fill the world's annual needs 250,000 times over with nearly zero impact on the climate or environment.

A study released this year by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said that if 40 percent of the heat under the United States could be tapped, it would meet demand 56,000 times over. It said an investment of $800 million to $1 billion could produce more than 100 gigawatts of electricity by 2050...

[cripplecreek]

He’s a smart guy with a lot of technical or engineering knowledge from his years as head of maintinance at a large shop.

He always has some interesting project going on around home.

[Stegall Tx]

I saw a show a couple of weeks ago on either the Discovery or Science Channels. It covered how Iceland is doing this already. According to the show, they used only one pipe, though it was fairly vague on the whole subject.

Of course, Iceland’s heat source is much closer to the surface than these guys are talking about.

[Stegall Tx]

Of course, nobody has yet mentioned that the #1 (by volume) greenhouse gas is ... WATER VAPOR!

[mamelukesabre]

The molten core solidifies, the earths magnetic field disappears, and we get bombarded by meteors, and compasses don’t work, no more northern lights or aurora Borealis.

Maybe. I’m only guessing.

[Double Tap]

You are kidding, right???

At three miles down they haven't even reached a quarter of the way through the crust, never mind the "Center". Technology doesn't exist to drill through the thinnest parts of the crust yet, so no worries of cooling the core.

[Moonman62]

A study released this year by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said that if 40 percent of the heat under the United States could be tapped, it would meet demand 56,000 times over. It said an investment of $800 million to $1 billion could produce more than 100 gigawatts of electricity by 2050...

So for the cost of the Iraq war (just saying) we could have had this technology many times over and told all of OPEC to go pound sand.

[Moonman62]

I’m guessing you’re joking. But anyway, all that heat gets out one way or another. We’d just be speeding up some.

[SunkenCiv]

So, other than the earthquakes... ;’)

Thanks ND.

[mamelukesabre]

Obviously they are way over optimistic. They said we’d have electric cars 30 years ago. They said we’d have flying cars 50 years ago. They said we’d all be on solar power 10 years ago.

Where’s our manned missions to mars? Where’s our lunar settlements? Where’s cold fusion? Robots? Self aware computers? Room temperature superconductors? Meteorite mining expeditions?

Now they are telling us the way of the future is ethanol and hydrogen fuel cells. I’ll believe it when I see it.

[Grizzled Bear]

So the outer layer is a hard chocolate shell and the center is sweet creamy nougat?

Don’t tempt me!

[cripplecreek]

[Grizzled Bear]

LOL!

The Caramel Eggs ROCK!

I’m surprised there’s so little push for Nuclear Energy. There’s a few places where you can get Geothermal reliably. Iceland and Yellowstone come to mind. But Nuclear Power can be produced almost anywhere.

[TheLion]

"This sounds very risky. If the center cools then what."

The earth's core will cool off naturally before we could ever suck all the energy out.

[Fred Nerks]

here you go, a series of 122 slides all about geothermal energy.

http://www.geothermal.marin.org/GEOpresentation/sld001.htm

[neverdem]

East River Fights Bid to Harness Its Currents for Electricity

Firms dock pay of obese, smokers

Anthrax-Hatfill - Judge's order on disclosure of sources - full text

FReepmail me if you want on or off my health and science ping list.

[SunkenCiv]

The Origin of Methane (and Oil) in the Crust of the Earth
by Thomas Gold
U.S.G.S. Professional Paper 1570
The Future of Energy Gases
1993

Hydrocarbons in our planetary system are certainly very abundant, and in all the extraterrestrial examples mentioned almost certainly not related to biology. Also hydrocarbons are prominent among the gases identified in the molecular clouds of the galaxy, and it is from such clouds that the solar system formed initially. The presence and great abundance of hydrocarbons is universal, and no special mechanism for their generation on the Earth needs to be invoked, unless one knew with certainty that they could not have survived the formation process here, although they did so on many of the other planetary bodies. No evidence of hydrocarbons has yet been seen on Mars, Moon, Venus and Mercury... In earlier times there was the belief that the Earth had formed as a hot, molten body. In that case no hydrocarbons or hydrogen would have survived against oxidation, nor would any of these substances have been maintained in the interior after solidification. With that belief, there seemed no other possibility of accounting for the hydrocarbons embedded in the crust than by the outgassing of carbon in the form of CO2, produced by materials that could have survived in a hot Earth, and subsequent photosynthesis by plants that converted this CO2 into unoxidized carbon compounds. This consideration is irrelevant now that we know that a cold formation process assembled the Earth and that hydrocarbons could have been maintained, and could be here for the same reasons as they are on the other planetary bodies.

[SunkenCiv]

BTW, bought this used a week or so ago, and have plowed right through most of it over the weekend (the computer was tied up running a hard drive data recovery program; not sure which review will appear first on my Amazon space). Excellent!

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The Bottomless Well: The Twilight of Fuel, the Virtue of Waste, and Why We Will Never Run Out of Energy by Peter W. Huber and Mark P. Mills

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[Orange1998]

I should had written sarc. :)

[Malsua]

This won’t work until they figure out how to drill two holes that meet, so they can pump water down one hole, and have steam come out the other.

Don't need two holes. You have a tubing and a Casing. The casing is the outer part, tubing being a smaller diameter pipe inside the casing. Pump water down the tubing, capture it as steam at the top of the casing.