Posted on 03/02/2022 12:30:38 PM PST by algore
Quaise Energy, a startup out of MIT, based in Boston and Houston, recently secured $40 million in funding to help it get the first drilling rig off the drawing board.
The system works by drilling down to base rock, then firing high-power millimeter waves into the ground, without the need for complex mechanical drills that are limited by the pressure and intense heat deep into the crust.
Regular metal drills get broken or just melt beyond a certain depth, when the heat and pressure becomes too much for them to handle.
The goal is to be able to repurpose existing fossil fuel power plants, replacing burning coal with 900F heat from miles below the surface of the Earth.
The firm hope to have the first drilling platform live by 2024, the first wells producing up to 100 megawatt of geothermal energy by 2026, and fossil power plants repurposed by 2028, delivering clean energy around the world.
Being able to tap into a globally available supply of geothermal energy requires drilling much deeper into the Earth than currently possible.
The Kola Superdeep Borehole in Russia holds the record for deepest produced hole, going down about seven miles, but even that isn't enough for Quaise Energy.
They suggest that drilling would need to go down to about 12 miles below the surface in order to reach rocks hot enough to power massive power plants
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
So… releasing 900 degree heat from deep in the earth to counteract global warming.
Why would they want to dig another hole in the ground?
We have volcanoes all around the globe. Why not just use an existing volcano
i’ll prolly get slapped for this, but
once they reach a depth hot enough to create superheated steam, why keep drilling?
volume?
Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.
Another high tech start-up looking for a whole lot of money.
As investors seem enthralled with anything that appears to be high tech, they are an easy mark for any free energy plan that seems too good to be true.
You know what they say about that!
I liked that movie, (I saw it when I was like 11 or 12). Thanks for posting.
No need to drill to magma depths for the geothermal effects. Water boils at 212 F (100 C) so a consistent 250 would be plenty to keep a system producing power. Nowhere near the melting point of rock.
From the LinkedIn page:
“Quaise develops millimeter wave drilling systems for deep geothermal heat access. Our technology is the only approach in the world with the potential to build geothermal wells at unprecedented depths and temperatures.
By targeting depths up to 20 kilometers and temperatures up to 500 degrees Celsius, we will have the ability to build clean electric generation and heat distribution plants within a short distance of every major population and industrial center on the planet, at a fraction of the footprint of other renewables.
And by scaling through the established supply base of the fossil fuel industry, we will be able to achieve the terawatt-level annual deployments that will be required to successfully decarbonize our global energy system.”
Now THAT’s a sales pitch that does sound too good to be true!
I think cold fusion has better prospects!
Will the hole be deep enough to see China? Aybe Walmart could use the hole to transport all the cheap shizit to the US. Wrap it in tin foil and down the hole!
Do you want Hell’s minions walking the earth?
sorry Grets, my bad...
To me, it would be all about surface area. There would only be a limited volume of “hot rock” exposed it a vertical well. Why not do as you say and drill a lateral into a volcano? They technology may exist to have the lateral surface and the other side and you could pump water directly through it.
If you put enough water down there for the steam, won’t it cool off the area and then you have to drill another hole?
Correct in every way.
Inferno shows up a lot on the classic Dr Who channel on Roku.
Instead of oil spraying out of the ground it will be HOT MAGMA.
Be careful. This could happen
http://www.wildsingapore.com/news/20070102/070124-5.htm
Think of it as like pushing a small, hot soldering iron head deep into a block of compressed thermoplastic beads. Along the way, a stable tube of formed plastic is also created.
The funding for this new technology is private, with utilities seen as the definitive customers. The plan is to put a geothermal well next to existing fossil fuel plants. This is projected to replace greenhouse gases and to make use of existing permits and connections to the grid.
Unmentioned in the article is that the same technology is expected to improve tunnel boring machines. Instead of mechanically crushing rock with a massive drill head to bore a tunnel, millimeter wave energy generated by a much smaller and lighter machine will shatter rock into small bits that can be flushed away and pumped up to the surface. That should also make hard rock mining much easier, cheaper, and safer.
All of which assumes that there are not some unforeseen technological or economic show stoppers lying in wait.
Let that Oak Island Canadian outfit put some can in the ground.
I dunno. I think I read somewhere that the rock itself was so unstable that it wouldn’t contain the steam, stuff like that.
This seems to be a nice relatively low-tech approach towards producing energy in large quantities, so I think it’s worth pursuing.
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