Geothermal
Seattle-based AltaRock Energy Inc.has announced that it is confident that it has created three geothermal reservoirs from a single well. The importance of this is the high cost of drilling a deep well to reach hot rock deep underground is less significant if multiple reservoirs of hot fluid, possibly at diferent levels, can be created from a single well. AltaRock engineers pumped cold water into the ground, cracking open fissures in the deep rock and forming a reservoir of hot water..They then sealed this reservoir by injecting ground-up recycled plastic bottles, which plugged up the cracks. Millions more gallons of … Continue Reading
Simbol Materials, a Californian company, plans to extract lithium, as well as zinc and manganese, from the brine that is pumped by geothermal power plants. Currently many geothermal plants pump hot brine from deep underground to produce steam and then inject the cooled brine back into the ground. This brine is rich in minerals including lithium, which is abundant in the Earth’s crust but does not often occur in concentrations which can be economically exploited. In 2010, worldwide demand for lithium chemicals was about 102,000 tonnes. This is expected to increase to as much as 320,000 tonnes by 2020 – … Continue Reading
Potter Drilling, which is partly funded by Google.org, is developing a novel drill which uses heat, rather than abrasion, to break through rock. Rocks do not expand uniformly when they get hot. This creates stress between the grains of the mineral sand that causes them to break apart. According to Jared Potter, chief executive of Potter Drilling, "The key is to heat it very quickly". The idea was developed in the 1950s using hot air, effectively fired from a jet engine, to split rocks. But this only worked close to the surface in applications such as quarrying. The Potter drill … Continue Reading
Enhanced or "hot rock" geothermal power production usually works by pumping water into fissures in hot rocks deep underground, A shaft is drilled into the fissures and some ot the resulting super-heated water comes to the surface where it is used to drive a turbine. One problem with this technique is the amount of water needed since much of it remains underground. In 2000, a Los Alamos National Laboratory physicist, Donald Brown, proposed replacing water with supercritical carbon dioxide, a pressurized form that is part gas, part liquid. Subsequent modelling at the Lawrence Berkeley laboratory has shown that using carbon … Continue Reading
The US Department of Energy is beginning a program to demonatrate a way in which the oil industry can produce useful power from waste heat. When drilling oil and gas wells and on exploration drilling rigs, fluids are used to provide pressure, to keep the drill bit cool and clean and to carry the drill cuttings out of the bore hole. Because these wells are often deep the fluids are hot when they reach the surface. In the average US oil well, ten times as much hot fluid is produced as oil. The Department of Energy intends to demonstrate how … Continue Reading
Engineers from the University of Oviedo in Spain have published research which shows that mine shafts on the point of being closed down could be used to provide significant amounts of geothermal energy. The engineers have developed a method which makes it possible to estimate the amount of heat that a tunnel could potentially provide. According to Rafael Rodríguez, from the Oviedo Higher Technical School of Mining Engineering, "one way of making use of low-intensity geothermal energy is to convert mine shafts into geothermal boilers, which could provide heating and hot water for people living nearby". The study, published in … Continue Reading
Scientists at the US Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have developed a new method for capturing significantly more heat from low-temperature geothermal resources. A technical and economic analysis conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has estimated that enhanced geothermal systems could provide 10 percent of the United States’ overall electrical generating capacity by 2050. Their technique uses the rapid expansion and contraction capabilities of a new liquid, called a biphasic fluid, developed by the research team. To improve efficiency, the scientists have added nanostructured metal-organic heat carriers, which boost the power generation capacity to near that of … Continue Reading
The World Wildlife Fund and the Australian Geothermal Energy Association have produced a report on Australia’s geothermal energy potential. The main findings of the report are: By 2050 geothermal energy could reduce Australia’s emissions by avoiding approximately 25% of today’s electricity generation emissions. Over 17,000 Australians could be employed in the geothermal energy industry by 2050 Jobs from coal, oil and gas (and their associated service and support industries) are readily transferrable to the geothermal industry, thanks to similarities between drilling technologies. Baseload emission-free energy resources like geothermal need targeted support today so so that their development is fast and … Continue Reading
Raser Technologies has begun delivering 10 megawatts of clean electricity to Anaheim, California, from its first low-temperature, binary geothermal plant located in Beaver County, Utah. The plant’s power source is underground brine which is at a temperature of just 126ºC Geothermal plants typically need temperatures over 180ºC to operate effectively. In a binary cycle closed loop geothermal plant, hot brine is pulled from the earth and passed through a large tank that contains an evaporator. The heat from the brine causes a low-boiling-point fluid in the evaporator to flash into vapor. The vaporized fluid, which is now at high pressure, … Continue Reading
Google is investing $US10.5 million in three research projects on the potential of using geothermal energy from deeply buried hot rocks to produce electricity.
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Renewables News- Dysol Aiming to Print Storage with Solar CellsAustralia's Dyesol Limited has acquired an equity stake in Printed Power Pte Ltd, a spinoff company of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. Printed Power is focussing on integrating dye solar cell technology with printed storage and power management systems to … Continue Reading → […]
- CSIRO Printer Makes 10m of Solar Cells a MinuteCSIRO researchers have built a gigantic printer that spits out solar cells at a rate of about ten metres a minute. The printer system uses existing technology to embed polymer solar cells (also known as organic solar cells) in thin … Continue Reading → […]
- New Aussie Technology to Clean Polluted WaterScientists from Deakin University, together with French colleagues, say that they have manufactured a lightweight and reusable material that can absorb up to 33 times its weight in a wide range of spilt oils, chemical solvents and dyes, while repelling … Continue Reading → […]
- Dysol Aiming to Print Storage with Solar Cells
