Seems like the perfect candidate for $165 million in DOE research funding.
>The Geothermal Energy from Oil and Gas Demonstrated Engineering (GEODE) initiative will provide $10 million to form a consortium of experts to develop a roadmap for addressing technology and knowledge gaps in geothermal energy, based on best practices used within the oil and gas industry. DOE will then use that roadmap to fund up to an additional $155 million in research to address those gaps. This funding opportunity supports President Biden’s priorities to deploy clean energy sources to combat climate change, strengthen our energy independence, and create good-paying jobs.
And I thought that the technology seemed quite interesting, so I hope the development of it can pan out since it seemed like it would enable greater usage of geothermal energy around the world, which seems to be mostly untapped at this time, and also seemed like it might be able to address the seismic issue/concern, although I'm not an expert on the topic so I could be wrong there.
Geothermal is mainly a topic of interest for myself since there are a few local plants in my own region but I hadn't really realized that it is an underutilized power generation option until I read the article on Quaise recently above.
I believe the seismic problems come from water flowing across the bore hole and eventually destabilizing the ground (this can happen with fracking). The Quaise approach basically cauterizes the hole as it drills, so water can't flow across. The water is more of a closed system.
Why do I get the feeling that much of the $155M is going to end up in the pockets of the oil and gas industry? When it would better off invested in startups without the baggage, conflicts of interest, tunnel vision, etc.?
I wouldn’t be surprised if well drilling companies end up being able to do geothermal installs more cheaply than upstarts. They’re already drilling under some pretty extraordinary circumstances.
But, I share the concerns about corporate welfare and capture.
But if big oil companies like Shell decide they'd rather own geothermal plants than oil wells, then the key thing we wanted "It'd sure be nice if our planet remained habitable" works out. Even though maybe we'd prefer Green Corp. Inc. get wealthy and Shell lose everything that's not how capitalism works.
Apparently too many have forgotten that these companies knew well in advance where there product was taking us. They intentionally over years if not decades hid that from us. We know this. And yet we still trust them? And even want to reward them?
A prior boss of mine, one of the smartest guys I've ever worked for devised a geothermal extraction apparatus (theoretical) back when the Obama admin was flushing DOE with cash for grants. He was attempting to tackle some of the common barriers to "domestic" geothermal. The issue being it's hard to drill deep enough to reach rock hot enough.
His geothermal patent can be seen here [0] - it's a novel approach to vary the extent of power extracted from a geothermal well, while preventing the necessity to acquire both water rights AND mineral rights (commonly one of the biggest hurdles in "residential" geothermal deployments). The root of the patent is a novel means of "sealing" a geothermal well, providing bidirectional flow to and from the well.
His background is pretty interesting - he was a construction engineer by trade, but initially made his first fortune by speculating and purchasing land use options on corn-fields in Iowa. Turned out his guess was right, and DOE purchased some of his land to grow corn for ethanol production.
Reads more like: "DOE to spend toilet paper money to advance domestic geothermal energy." given the pet projects of members of congress eclipsing this by many multiples.
Back in summer 1988 in Champaign, Illinois, I was a guest in a new house for dinner, and it used geothermal heat capacitance (or some similar term...basically i think water tubes buried a bit lower than the house) to essentially provide access to average year round temperature.
Since the climate there swings between extremes, this significantly lessened their electric/gas bills to the point of being laughably small...essentially a heat pump connected to the water tubes, if I remember.
Geothermal power always sounds like a great idea. And it used to be one.
But nowadays, anything that needs a steam turbine is going to be more costly to operate than wind or solar + cheap storage, because steam turbines need expensive periodic maintenance.
(Geothermal heating, or for extra credit heating and cooling, remains viable.)
If you want to rescue geothermal power generation, you need to put in the engineering work to make a viable alternative to the steam turbine, one that needs a lot less, or anyway a lot cheaper, maintenance. Presumably it is still a turbine, but designed for a different working fluid. Some have suggested supercritical CO2 for this role.
Given that virtually every natural gas fired electrical generation facility has a steam turbine, I’m not sure that you are correct (though you may be).
It seems to me the costs would be high because doing anything deep underground is expensive.
I don't know what the current state of thermophotovoltaics are but maybe that's one way to go about it. Or maybe the temps are too low for that. Not sure.
UPDATE: Papers about geothermal source temperatures refer to tempratures up to 180°C. The thermal battery article above refer to TPV setups that use 1400°C source and efforts are being made to push temps to 2400°C for higher efficiency.
Does the term Geothermal apply to long-duration thermal driven power generation? I have a design for a large scale tidal power generation system, and as global warming continues it becomes more beneficial. Does that count?
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 56.0 ms ] threadA summary of this publication: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03601-4
Seems like the perfect candidate for $165 million in DOE research funding.
>The Geothermal Energy from Oil and Gas Demonstrated Engineering (GEODE) initiative will provide $10 million to form a consortium of experts to develop a roadmap for addressing technology and knowledge gaps in geothermal energy, based on best practices used within the oil and gas industry. DOE will then use that roadmap to fund up to an additional $155 million in research to address those gaps. This funding opportunity supports President Biden’s priorities to deploy clean energy sources to combat climate change, strengthen our energy independence, and create good-paying jobs.
Recently, I heard about this relatively new company named Quaise: https://newatlas.com/energy/quaise-deep-geothermal-millimete...
And I thought that the technology seemed quite interesting, so I hope the development of it can pan out since it seemed like it would enable greater usage of geothermal energy around the world, which seems to be mostly untapped at this time, and also seemed like it might be able to address the seismic issue/concern, although I'm not an expert on the topic so I could be wrong there.
Geothermal is mainly a topic of interest for myself since there are a few local plants in my own region but I hadn't really realized that it is an underutilized power generation option until I read the article on Quaise recently above.
But, I share the concerns about corporate welfare and capture.
Apparently too many have forgotten that these companies knew well in advance where there product was taking us. They intentionally over years if not decades hid that from us. We know this. And yet we still trust them? And even want to reward them?
But if might as well be Since we are fools...
His geothermal patent can be seen here [0] - it's a novel approach to vary the extent of power extracted from a geothermal well, while preventing the necessity to acquire both water rights AND mineral rights (commonly one of the biggest hurdles in "residential" geothermal deployments). The root of the patent is a novel means of "sealing" a geothermal well, providing bidirectional flow to and from the well.
His background is pretty interesting - he was a construction engineer by trade, but initially made his first fortune by speculating and purchasing land use options on corn-fields in Iowa. Turned out his guess was right, and DOE purchased some of his land to grow corn for ethanol production.
[0] - https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/20/12/43/9c15aaf...
Since the climate there swings between extremes, this significantly lessened their electric/gas bills to the point of being laughably small...essentially a heat pump connected to the water tubes, if I remember.
Unfortunately, they require either a very large area to dig very shallow, or they require drilling down very deep, or they require a pond.
I got quotes for the drilling once, and it was prohibitively expensive.
But nowadays, anything that needs a steam turbine is going to be more costly to operate than wind or solar + cheap storage, because steam turbines need expensive periodic maintenance.
(Geothermal heating, or for extra credit heating and cooling, remains viable.)
If you want to rescue geothermal power generation, you need to put in the engineering work to make a viable alternative to the steam turbine, one that needs a lot less, or anyway a lot cheaper, maintenance. Presumably it is still a turbine, but designed for a different working fluid. Some have suggested supercritical CO2 for this role.
It seems to me the costs would be high because doing anything deep underground is expensive.
https://www.science.org/content/article/thermal-batteries-co...
UPDATE: Papers about geothermal source temperatures refer to tempratures up to 180°C. The thermal battery article above refer to TPV setups that use 1400°C source and efforts are being made to push temps to 2400°C for higher efficiency.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/geothermal-...