Posted on 02/25/2011 11:11:36 AM PST by decimon
Engineers have started drilling a hole deep below Newcastle in the search for a renewable energy source.
The Newcastle and Durham Universities team plans to sink a hole 2,000m (6,562ft) below the planned Science Central site, in the city centre.
Scientists hope the £900,000 project will result in water at a temperature of about 80C (176F) being pumped out.
The plan is the water could be used to heat the site and surrounding city centre buildings.
The project, which started on Wednesday, is expected to last six months with the team hoping to pump out the first hot water in June.
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The Newcastle project is similar to one already operating in Southampton, where underground hot water is used along with oil and natural gas for a combined heat and power network.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...
There are many, many active geothermal wells currently in use.
This is just for California:
ftp://ftp.consrv.ca.gov/pub/oil/maps/Geothermal/MapS-11.pdf
To be superheated it would have to be over 212 degrees F.
Superheated means that the water has been heated above the boiling point for water at a given pressure.
I don't think so. That would be for horizontal movement.
There is a specific energy requirement, in addition to frictional losses, to raise a pound of anything a foot above its starting point.
In fact, I think it's a unit of measurement called a foot-pound. :)
A bit over a mile deep isn't all that deep. We have many, many oil wells far deeper.
You don't need to drill any mile down to do that in most of the USA.
The temperature of the ground six or eight feet down in most areas is the same as the average air temperature over the course of the year.
So if you dig down the appropriate distance and lay a bunch of pipe, the water that comes out the end of the system will be at (about) average air temperature for the year.
Here's a link to a map for US annual air temperatures.
http://www.maps.com/ref_map.aspx?cid=680,747,1304&pid=11583
(I don't know how to post pics.)
Designing such a system is not for the faint-hearted. Dramatically affected by soil type, water table level and a bunch of other factors. But the basic principle is valid.
If you look at the map you can see ground temperature won't provide effective AC in the South, and it sure won't heat the house in the North.
People who make movies don’t care about facts.
We have mines deeper.
"The deepest mine in this region (Witwatersrand) is currently Western Deep mine, a network of tunnels which penetrates 3.5 km into the Earth's crust."
Unless they have the water in a loop, in which case the weight of the water in the down-going side of the loop balances the water in the upcoming side, leaving only frictional losses in the round trip.
HP = wt. per gallon (water @ 8.3 ppg) x depth x.052 = Hydrostatic Pressure.
At 5300 feet vertical, the bottom hole pressure (hydrostatic) is 2287 psi. One would need to maintain a pump pressure exceeding that pressure to move a column of fluid at that depth. Velocity also increases circulation density which also requires more power to maintain the flow of the fluid column. It also varies due to the rheology of the fluid used. (Viscosity/yield point)
Ignore the map I posted. It’s for average air temperature in January.
Surprisingly difficult to find an annual average temperature map.
Here’s a vintage version. 1887.
http://www.etsy.com/listing/26672589/1887-temperature-and-rainfall-map-of-the
Are you sure of these figures? Didn't Al Gore, who invented the Internet and won the Nobel Prize in Climatology, say that just a couple of miles below the surface the temperature was millions of degrees?
True. However, that would require a closed loop, with essentially a heat exchanger somehow installed at the base. My take on the story was that they were planning to pump out the water they found at that depth, not inject water from the surface and heat it.
When I lived in NM they were working on the inject water and heat it model in the mountains west of Los Alamos. This was several decades ago. Last I heard they were still working on it.
You drill a shallower hole.
At some point you strike surface water table that is going to be the approximate average temperature and lower than the surface.
I must have missed that one.....Damn!
Man made earthquakes? About as realistic as man made global warming.
It is, to a lawyer, who reasons as follows: "Someone drilled a hole. Later, and earthquake happened. Therefore, the hole caused the earthquake and whoever drilled it is liable for the damages and my fee."
In the case of Global Warming, liberals reason in a similar fashion: "The temperature rises. Years later, the carbon dioxide rises. Therefore, the carbon dioxide caused the temperature rise, and the government must control even more of the economy."
A heat exchanger would be more compact than sticking a pump down at the bottom.
You can't suck water up from that far down, you have to have the pump down below pushing it up.
Earthquakes (small to moderate) being caused by the filling of reservoirs and the INJECTION of fluids underground have been extremely well documented in multiple locations for some years now.
Like superheated steam. Thought of that after posting.
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