[HN Gopher] You can have geothermal power everywhere if you dril...
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You can have geothermal power everywhere if you drill deep enough
Author : stareatgoats
Score : 367 points
Date : 2022-02-25 09:15 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.treehugger.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.treehugger.com)
| abeppu wrote:
| > The microwave beam is hot enough to evaporate rock, and the
| vaporized rock is pumped back to the surface.
|
| Is this part harder than it sounds? Do you need to keep it as hot
| vapor until it gets to the surface? What do you do with it then?
| Presumably a 12 mile column of rock turns into a whole lot of
| vapor. Is it toxic? When vaporized rock cools, does it become
| just sand, or are there interesting/concerning chemicals left
| over?
|
| As a lay person, I'm never sure when I read about new tech to
| address environmental issues whether we're creating a new
| problem. We've spent generations aggressively pumping carbon out
| of the ground and into the atmosphere. Would a move towards rock-
| vaporizing drilling just mean aggressively pumping a bunch of
| silicon, iron, etc out of the ground and into the atmosphere?
| perlgeek wrote:
| I don't really know, so take my answer with a grain of salt,
| but my lay understanding of chemistry and physics tells me:
|
| * Typically vaporized solids a fine powder they cools down in
| air, or otherwise deposit on cool surfaces
|
| * Fine rock powder could be hazard to lungs, but it shouldn't
| be too hard filter it out of the air that leaves the hole
|
| * Some rock materials contain sulfates or phosphates; letting
| those escape into the atmosphere in large quantities would be
| bad; but you could always let it recombine with the rest of the
| evaporated rock, rendering it inert. Such a process wouldn't be
| 100%, so this is something worth looking out for.
|
| Most wealthy countries require an environmental impact
| assessment before any such operation, so there's hope such
| things would be caught before they become a big problem.
| cryptica wrote:
| I hope that investors did the math to ensure that the energy used
| to dig such a deep hole with microwaves doesn't end up consuming
| more energy than the hole will generate over its lifetime... Will
| the hole crack irreparably after a few months?
|
| Nowadays, there seems to be an epidemic of engineering neglect in
| terms of capital allocation. A lot of wealthy individuals who
| have the capital to invest in such projects do not seem to have
| the engineering mindset (or no longer do) to see through
| greenwashing BS.
|
| "It's all about the people" is BS. These days, there are
| charlatans everywhere and they seem to have monopolized all the
| billionaires.
| re6fae5Wied5tha wrote:
| I can't imagine it takes more than a few circuits of water
| through the bore to recover all of the energy, the static
| column of water alone would contain a non-trivial fraction of
| the energy required to drill the bore after equilibrating.
| suction wrote:
| And every dance move is "The Robot" if you imagine an advanced
| enough robot...
| grecy wrote:
| I can't help but wonder if this means we can drill our own
| private hot springs wherever we want...
| FlyNestor wrote:
| Hope this new technology will have success. You never know it can
| be the next Theranos.
| FrankyHollywood wrote:
| Drilling is not the problem which stands in the way for using
| earth warmth.
|
| It is pollution of ground water, risk of earth quakes,
| transportation of the heat, local cool down and having to drill
| new wholes.
|
| In Europe we have tried, and tested with wholes up to 1km depth
| but it is not as ideal as one might think. Otherwise it would
| have been used on a large scale already.
| empressplay wrote:
| War is the mother of innovation
| bencollier49 wrote:
| How much geothermal power would you need to extract to completely
| cool the core of the Earth?
| themerone wrote:
| All of it.
| imgabe wrote:
| How much energy is in the core of the Earth? What happens if we
| cooled the core to the point that it became solid? I'm guessing
| that would be bad, but is it something that's not conceivably
| possible on any human timescale?
| chii wrote:
| It would take quite a lot to cool the core.
| Rapzid wrote:
| About 47TW of internal energy reaches the surface and it could
| take up to 90 billion years to cool so...
|
| No, never with current technology.
| ComradePhil wrote:
| We can pump heat into the core when it is hotter in the
| surface. So, it can also work as a battery.
| axiolite wrote:
| > We can pump heat into the core when it is hotter in the
| surface.
|
| Were you expecting a massive meteor impact in the near future
| that the rest of us are unaware of?
|
| If not, exactly how were you planning to get enough heat at
| the surface of the Earth to warm-up the core?
| ComradePhil wrote:
| Do you think we drill to the very core to get thermal
| energy? Well, I have disappointing news for you: The earths
| radius is 6,371 km; for thermal plants, we dig like 5 km.
|
| While the core is 5000 degrees celcius, the point we dig to
| is more like 150. Concentrated solar power can generate
| 1000 degree celcius. If we pump this down when we have
| excess, the area remains hotter than it would otherwise
| be... letting us use it when the sun sets. This can also
| work through much longer timescales, like you could dump
| energy heat down in the summer and harvest it in the
| winter.
|
| The post I was replying to was worried about gradual loss
| of core heat. This will be minimized if we pump heat in.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "What happens if we cooled the core to the point that it became
| solid? "
|
| That would be very, very bad, but if you look at the numbers,
| like others pointed out - this is not an issue with our current
| tech.
|
| I would be more worried about earthquakes and co. because deep
| plate tectonic is not understood well.
|
| And when you cool one area significantly, that creates tension
| in the rock, because of the heat difference to other hotter
| areas.
| pm90 wrote:
| Not until humanity becomes a type 2 Civilization. Which seems
| like at least a 1000 years away.
| kragen wrote:
| 64.
| holoduke wrote:
| Wonder if one day we find out that thermal energy is cooling down
| earth too much. Reducing magnetic field around the earth which
| causes a huge reduction of our ozone layer and eventually even
| the entire atmosphere.
| grey_earthling wrote:
| I used to read Treehugger regularly, until a couple of years ago
| when they deleted their RSS feed. I'd forgotten the site existed
| until just now.
|
| (Make of that what you will.)
| z3t4 wrote:
| If we do this in large enough scale, will the earth eventually
| cool down?
| a1371 wrote:
| A lot of people like to talk about nuclear as a climate solution.
| Geothermal is the most gargantuous nuclear plant we can fathom,
| all we have to do is to extend a pipe and harvest it.
|
| Here is the thing, a lot of that tech is coming from oil and gas.
| An industry with a track record of leaving the land they enter in
| terrible shape.
|
| I think we have to start over with geothermal and look at it more
| like hydro electricity. We should harvest the electricity on the
| way down, not the way up. I wish I'd get rich enough one day to
| devote my life to this.
| ComradePhil wrote:
| > We should harvest the electricity on the way down, not the
| way up.
|
| Could you please explain what you mean?
| tschwimmer wrote:
| I have to assume GP means that we should extract the
| geothermal heat at the bottom of the well/borehole, not by
| bringing the oil back up to burn it.
| a1371 wrote:
| No, I mean we should use the motion of the water, not its
| heat. Like in hydroelectricity where water spins a turbine
| instead we are using a steam generator like gas fired
| plants
| manarth wrote:
| A steam turbine essentially _does_ use the motion of the
| water.
|
| In conventional hydroelectricity, gravity causes the
| motion through the energy differential of the waters'
| height.
|
| In a steam turbine, the potential energy is from the high
| temperature of the water, and the energy input to rotate
| the turbine comes from the temperature differential of
| the steam cooling.
|
| In theory you could capture the hydroelectric energy of
| the water on its way down a 12 mile hole, but that
| gravitic potential energy is negligable compared to the
| energy difference between superheated steam and water.
| Rapzid wrote:
| Geothermal does use the "motion" of the water.
| napier wrote:
| There's no need to drill down ultra deep if you leverage
| recent advances in horizontal drilling to creat a series
| of looping branches off of a central trunk, as it were.
| Can run a closed loop of circulating fluid too, which
| offers numerous advantages and obviates risk of fracking
| related earthquakes, as well as avoiding the corrosion
| challenges problematic with legacy approaches.
| re6fae5Wied5tha wrote:
| There's no reason to drill for this, and 6 miles down at
| 1000C presets less than ideal operating conditions for a
| turbine.
|
| Any peak over about 2000ft should be sufficient for an
| atmospheric water generation plant to produce enough
| water for a down hill hydroelectric plant to power the
| atmospheric water generation plant with single digit
| ambient RH, and much lower elevations can be used in high
| RH climes.
|
| I would recommend orienting collectors to the windward
| side to exploit the local humidity gain, in lower RH
| climes.
|
| One of my projects is actually a water condensation,
| hydroelectric and gas liquefaction combined cycle plant.
|
| That said, bores in areas with deep ground water do
| present an interesting opportunity for pumped storage,
| with the caveat that the turbomachinery is back in the
| bore hole and that's a really inconvenient place to fix
| it when it breaks.
| axiolite wrote:
| > that tech is coming from oil and gas. An industry with a
| track record of leaving the land they enter in terrible shape.
|
| I think coal and most other mineral extraction industries would
| love to have the relatively good environmental record of oil
| and gas companies. One small opening at the surface, no need to
| send hundreds of people in. Pretty small and quiet facility
| above ground where all the work gets done, etc. As terrible as
| an oil spill is, they're not very common.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| As terrible as oil spills are, gas spills are currently a
| much larger problem. They are just not as visible.
|
| Once we get enough solar capacity to start thinking about
| carbon capture, maybe methane capture is the most interesting
| problem to start with.
| perlgeek wrote:
| > and look at it more like hydro electricity
|
| I hope you are aware that hydro also has a reputation for
| destroying natural environments at a pretty huge scale
| charles_f wrote:
| Somewhat related, I used to think that residential geothermal
| heating was basically harvesting the steaming heat from the soil
| to your house. I figured that would require seating on a volcano.
|
| In fact it's using a heat pump, and liquid circulating in pipes
| burried a few feet underground to act as a thermal sink, to
| either heat or cool down a house. This works well because the
| temperature in the ground doesn't fluctuate much past 3ft. Pretty
| neat, and does not require to go down miles (though it's moving
| energy to/from ground rather than harvesting it and you still
| need an energy source for the pump)
| pharke wrote:
| If we converted all energy production to geothermal, would it be
| possible to significantly increase the cooling of the Earth's
| core?
|
| The flow from the Earth's core to the surface is estimated at
| 47+-2 terawatts[0]
|
| The total energy supply for 2017 was 162,494 TWh[1]
|
| World energy demand is expected to grow 27% by 2040
|
| Currently, heat escaping from the Earth accounts for only 0.03%
| of Earth's total energy budget at the surface which is dominated
| by the 173,000 TW contributed by solar radiation[0] What effect
| would it have if the vented heat were equal to the amount
| contributed by the sun?
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_internal_heat_budget
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_supply_and_consum...
| RugnirViking wrote:
| surely there must be some numbers wrong here? How can the total
| energy supply be only just barely less than the entire amount
| of energy applied to the planet by solar radiation?
|
| Is it suggesting that covering the entire surface of earth with
| 100% efficient solar panels would just barely cover 2017's
| power supply?
|
| Edit: ah I see, world energy is in terawatt hours for an entire
| year, wheras planetary solar energy is terawatts in a single
| hour
| originalvichy wrote:
| I can be wrong but that number sounds so low that it might mean
| the energy at the literal surface, in the same vein as how much
| solar heat energy reaches the planet's surface.
|
| I assume that the number is vastly greater if you measure the
| heat 1km below sea level for example.
| ant6n wrote:
| The bigger question is whether we will heat up the surface top
| much, given that the energy would be produced by a heat engine.
|
| (I suppose you could build a heat engine by using the
| temperature differentials of different underground layers,
| although I've never seen that proposed)
| samatman wrote:
| The only mechanism we would have for significantly increasing
| the cooling of the Earth's core would involve heading the
| atmosphere well past the habitable band.
|
| Ultimately if heat isn't radiating from the atmosphere, it
| isn't leaving the planet.
| throwaway9870 wrote:
| You just don't "use" heat to make electricity. You need some sort
| of heat engine running a cycle. All those require temperature
| differential. This is basic thermodynamics and isn't going to
| change with new technology. This temp differential is what is
| required to extract useful energy. So I don't understand why they
| talk about material at a certain temp having energy compared to
| oil. If we lived on a planet that is uniformly 1000 deg F, it
| wouldn't help us because we don't have a temp differential to
| convert thermal energy to electric.
|
| Nowhere in the article did I see them mention temp differential
| and where they are going to dump the waste heat? Nuclear plants
| get crapped on because they dump heat into adjacent water bodies,
| how is this different?
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| Your point is well made. If all it took was heat, then climate
| change would probably be the best thing ever. More heat
| captured from the sun would give us more energy.
| hedora wrote:
| Open challenge: Getting an elected US politician to seriously
| propose a space heat sink as a solution to climate change.
|
| There were some people seriously proposing big convection
| tubes that'd bootstrap columns of hot air, then passively
| pull surface air into the upper atmosphere. I can't find a
| link, but those wouldn't get to low earth orbit, so not a
| "space" technology.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| I've heard of launching some large mirrors into orbit, or a
| bunch of small mirrors that can link together in orbit.
| Then you use them to reflect some sunlight off into space.
| I have no idea how practical this is. The bigger concern
| would be if something goes wrong, you need to make the
| mirrors deorbit quickly.
| hedora wrote:
| You could set it so that some of the mirrors formed a
| parabolic collector and heated a molten salt column, etc
| on the surface.
|
| That'd have the same net effect as the giant heat sink
| (energy production from a heat engine, net negative flow
| of energy to the surface).
|
| Wasn't there a city builder that'd let you build such a
| thing, where it would sometimes lose calibration and burn
| a swath of the city to the ground?
| yissp wrote:
| Futurama had a similar joke (with a reflecting mirror,
| not a heat collector)
| https://gfycat.com/hatefulvariablekakapo
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Ok, with the sheer amount of red flags on the article, you
| chose that hill to die on?
|
| If you can get it anywhere, you go get it near the sea, and
| dump your heat there.
| throwaway9870 wrote:
| Heat exchangers running in ocean water are very difficult
| because they build up algae and other debris that can
| significantly reduce their efficiency.
|
| None of this is rocket science, it is all well known to
| anyone who actually wants to do some research. Unfortunately,
| it seems like the people most vocal about energy are
| generally the least informed.
| hedora wrote:
| Putting the heat exchanger on a tethered weather balloon
| and floating it into low earth order addresses all those
| concerns.
|
| It also doesn't involve rocket science.
|
| QED.
| throwaway9870 wrote:
| I think you just proved my point better than I could have
| ever done: Those most vocal about energy are generally
| the least informed.
|
| Let me guess, you have no formal engineering training, do
| you?
|
| EDIT: to make this comment more constructive, here is a
| link to an excellent book on energy processes:
| https://www.amazon.com/Fundamentals-Renewable-Energy-
| Process...
|
| I took a class with da Rosa and at the time this book was
| still in draft form, but nonetheless, excellent and easy
| to read. There appear to be new editions, don't know the
| differences.
| hedora wrote:
| I was being sarcastic.
|
| However, my previous comment is technically correct. You
| still haven't raised any valid technical concerns with my
| solution.
|
| If Mike Hughes (1) were still alive, I'm sure he'd be
| willing to be hired to prove me correct.
|
| (1) The steam powered rocket guy that coincidentally
| became a flat earther after running out of money. The
| flat earthers ended up funding his (mostly) successful
| steam rocket.
|
| Everyone knows the footage from NASA and the rest of the
| aerospace-round-earth-industrial-military-complex is all
| faked. Helium and Hydrogen are the devil's gas, so
| weather balloons also won't work.
|
| I hope the flat earthers find some other mad scientist to
| replace him soon.
|
| (Edit: I enjoyed the textbook "energy", but I've
| forgotten the author's name. Sadly, it's not really
| findable with search engines. It took a whole systems
| approach (including raw material extraction and
| maintenance)
| [deleted]
| geoduck14 wrote:
| >You need some sort of heat engine running a cycle. All those
| require temperature differential.
|
| I lived a long time before I figured this out. It is important
| tomatotomato37 wrote:
| I believe this is also the Achilles heel of nuclear too. It's
| an amazing, cheap, and sustainable way of creating concentrated
| heat, but an absolute pill of complexity and labor needed to
| turn that heat into spinning turbines. Nuclear's future should
| be in town heat & high temperature industry, not electricity.
| russellbeattie wrote:
| I suggested an idea for a backyard geothermal generator in a
| comment a few months ago and got shut down because it would be
| too costly to drill the hole. But hey now! This microwave drill
| might do the trick!
|
| Hmm. Are magnetrons and gyrotrons the same thing? Probably not.
| So we can't rip apart an old microwave oven and start drilling
| holes out back just yet. Damn.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27777665
| mikeyouse wrote:
| There's some very interesting work being done with shallower,
| cooler temperature geothermal combined with rankine cycle
| generation as well:
|
| https://mobile.twitter.com/OrmatInc
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| A few Lithuanian names there. They've apparently tried geothermal
| in Klaipeda but faced salt water which was hard to handle.
|
| Generally Eastern European cities with centralised heating are
| very suited for geothermal. Except they'll loose all that sweet
| sweet kickback from Russian oil dealer.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| I can't find what the progress or results of the arpa-e project
| were either on the quais website or elsewhere.
| https://arpa-e.energy.gov/technologies/projects/millimeter-w...
|
| The Altarock energy site is currently showing a 503. Altarock
| from Seattle won the arpa grant and were noted as an "affiliate"
| of Quais in the ieee article.
|
| https://spectrum.ieee.org/altarock-energy-melts-rock-with-mi...
| hsnewman wrote:
| Thanks, captain obvious.
| WalterBright wrote:
| If you drill a hole deep enough, you'll be unable to prevent the
| hole from collapsing in on itself. I wonder how deep that would
| be.
| kragen wrote:
| Conventionally you fill the hole with mud with the same density
| as the rock, avoiding this problem. You couldn't drill into the
| inner core that way because it's liquid, and maybe at some
| shallower depth you'd run out of candidate mud materials that
| will stay liquid at the relevant temperature, but given the
| right mud I think you could pass the Moho. So far, though, the
| problem is breaking drill strings.
| TeeMassive wrote:
| I've always wondered, but geothermal plants are basically huge
| radiators. If Humanity taps into this energy in industrial scale
| for centuries, would we cool the planet's mantle and core enough
| to have repercussions on the magnetic field for example?
| modeless wrote:
| 20 km is 0.3% of the way to the center of the earth. It seems
| unlikely that anything we do there could affect the core in a
| meaningful way.
| crgi wrote:
| Anyone thinking about earthquakes when going that deep? In
| Switzerland they had to stop some geothermal projects after
| triggering earthquakes while drilling deep.
| pg_bot wrote:
| The geothermal projects in Switzerland (and South Korea) used
| pressurized water to form cracks within the rock (similar to
| fracking). Also typical geothermal projects need to be near
| fault lines since that is where the low hanging fruit is. Since
| this method will forgo those steps you should greatly minimize
| the likelihood of triggering an earthquake.
| imranhou wrote:
| Is there a chance that the hole creates a mini volcano that
| cannot be stopped?
| re6fae5Wied5tha wrote:
| This is actually the risk I came here to mention about deep
| bores.
|
| Bore first, build later, otherwise you may be the unlucky
| winner of a fluid formation trapped under a rigid formation in
| the local geology.
|
| https://theconversation.com/a-mud-volcano-has-been-erupting-...
| erosenbe0 wrote:
| One assumes well blowouts will be a serious problem, as with
| any energy extraction.
| ineedasername wrote:
| Whenever the topic comes up, it always seems strange that going
| more than just a handful of mi/km down is an incredibly difficult
| task.
|
| Because it makes me realize-- or remember-- that the most life-
| hostile & technology-defying environments aren't in far off
| geographic locations or far out in space, they're a constant
| presence just under my feet. A shorter distance from me right now
| than I travel in my daily commute.
|
| That as space enthusiasts (rightfully) speculate or plan the
| future above our heads, there are incredible things going on
| beneath our feet at forces and temperatures that also produce
| very exotic materials and even the prospect of untapped clean
| energy just a short distance away from every single place in the
| planet. (Assuming that drilling down for geothermal power isn't
| horrible for the environment?)
|
| Just another example of how very little in the natural world is
| truly mundane and there are incredible things everywhere.
| tiku wrote:
| I always wondered why we didn't have laser drills yet, but
| microwave drills sound way cooler.
| perlgeek wrote:
| Why not make it microwave lasers? :-)
| doikor wrote:
| There is a project for deep geothermal heat in Finland. They
| specifically chose to do it here as it is one of the worst places
| to do it (have to drill really deep to get anything useful also
| the first 4 to 5km is just pure bedrock instead of some softer
| material).
|
| So they ended up making 6.4km deep holes where they got 121
| degree (celcius) water. Once pumped up to ground level it cools
| down to 110 degrees but it is more then hot enough for district
| heating.
|
| The original plan was to got 9km deep but it was already hot
| enough at 6.4km so they stopped there to save money.
|
| https://www.st1.com/geothermal-heat
| rvalue wrote:
| and suffer the fate of krypton?
|
| sorry, I couldn't read the article without solving the question
| of energy cycle in my mind. renewable sources like solar, wind
| are kind of taking energy from outside, so in case of geo-
| thermal, if we keep using that, there is nothing thats balancing
| the equation.
| stareatgoats wrote:
| You are right, this tech would cause the core to lose
| temperature at a slightly higher rate than otherwise. At the
| moment the earths core is cooling at the rate of 0.1 degC per
| million years from the current temperature of about 5,100 degC,
| interspersed with periods where the temperature loss is stopped
| or reversed because of gravity forces [0]. But any conceivable
| number of deep geothermic wells would not affect that rate in
| any measurable way.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth's_inner_core
| giantg2 wrote:
| In regards to the deeper drilling... wasn't there an article
| recently that the core is cooling faster than previously thought?
| Do we know how it could affect the earth if we are doing this at
| a large scale? Are we going to cause problems further down the
| road because we don't know enough.
| modeless wrote:
| Converting existing fossil fuel plants sounds awesome. But they
| haven't actually drilled any deep holes with this new technology
| yet, right? They're going to go from nothing to drilling almost
| twice as deep as the deepest hole ever drilled by humans, in four
| years?
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| The comments on the article make me lose faith in humanity.
|
| Amazing technology though, this coupled with solar could really
| make people independent of centralised energy systems
| lwouis wrote:
| Independence is a pipe-dream. You always depend on others and
| physical resources. If you install a solar panel to "become
| independent from centralized energy systems", you're moving
| from a dependence to established energy networks to another
| type of dependence. You now depend on people making,
| delivering, maintaining panels for you. As well as the
| batteries to store the energy.
|
| No-one can make or repair this take themselves. You just moved
| the dependence from one system to another. The current system
| is also battle-tested and mutualized. Outage see lots of people
| on deck to fix things. If your solar installation panel breaks
| it's your individual problem and it will quickly reveal just
| how dependent you actually are.
|
| The only way to be independent of other humans would be to live
| a lifestyle which requires only rudimentary knowledge, and the
| muscles of your body. Probably only hunter-gatherer. Anything
| beyond that means you rely on knowledge, skills, and muscles of
| other, and dependent on them for your life.
|
| Maybe you knew all this, but it may still be useful for other
| readers to realize since these days we hear a lot of prophets
| telling us how we should increase our independence by
| installing solar panels or wind turbines. And people don't
| think twice about where these come from, and who will maintain
| them.
| qiskit wrote:
| > If you install a solar panel to "become independent from
| centralized energy systems", you're moving from a dependence
| to established energy networks to another type of dependence.
| You now depend on people making, delivering, maintaining
| panels for you. As well as the batteries to store the energy.
|
| Thank you. People claim they are independent because they are
| off-grid and using solar panels. But are they really? Solar
| panels last about 10 years and then what? Of course they are
| dependent on the grid that provides them the solar panels and
| batteries.
| CyanLite4 wrote:
| I wonder if you could optimize it a little further to get energy
| from both directions...
|
| Energy produced in the way up (heated water) and on the way down
| (gravity-Fed turbines)
| aaron695 wrote:
| throwaway0332 wrote:
| > True geothermal energy is truly green
|
| Reminder: few energy sources do not add heating to the atmosphere
| during the whole energy lifecycle!
|
| It's the ones that *subtract* energy from the environment in the
| first place: solar, wind, dams, tidal energy.
|
| Other sources (including geothermal, nuclear, oil ...), even if
| we could produce a 100% efficient power plant, are still
| extracting energy that would otherwise stayed "locked-in"
| somewhere.
|
| Keep in mind that virtually all electrical energy produced turns
| into heat released in the atmosphere.
| alex_smart wrote:
| I think one relevant question is: how does that amount of
| energy compare to the energy that the earth is bombarded with
| by the sun anyways? If it is miniscule (say less than 1%) in
| comparison, will that have a significant impact on global
| warming?
|
| https://news.mit.edu/2011/energy-scale-part3-1026
|
| >A total of 173,000 terawatts (trillions of watts) of solar
| energy strikes the Earth continuously. That's more than 10,000
| times the world's total energy use.
|
| So even if we get all of our current energy needs from these
| sources, that is less than 0.01% of the energy earth gets from
| the sun. Is that going to have a significant effect on the
| temperature of the earth?
| andy_ppp wrote:
| Energy from heat is never discussed with climate change, only
| energy from the greenhouse effect. Do you know what percentage
| of each (roughly) human activity is causing?
| Animats wrote:
| Microwave drilling. It's a known thing at small scale.[1] If it
| can be done at larger scale, it ought to have other applications.
| Doing it downhole at the end of a long pipe string is going to be
| much harder than doing it in a factory. So why isn't this an
| industrial machining process already, like plasma cutting?
|
| GA Drilling was pushing plasma drilling back in 2018.[2] They're
| still pushing it, but not making holes.
|
| The University of Minnesota was pushing electro-pulse boring in
| 2015.[3] Again, no deep holes.
|
| There's something called ThermoDrilling, which, despite the name,
| is more like a water jet cutter.[4]
|
| Successful projects are still using mechanical drilling.[5]
|
| So there are a lot of deep hole drilling approaches being
| studied. Anything that works would be used by the oil and gas
| industry, and if they're not trying it, one suspects it might not
| be working.
|
| [1]
| https://www.researchgate.net/publication/270653673_Microwave...
|
| [2] https://www.gadrilling.com/
|
| [3] https://experts.umn.edu/en/publications/electro-pulse-
| boring...
|
| [4] https://www.geodrillinginternational.com/deep-
| geothermal/new...
|
| [5] https://geothermalengineering.co.uk/united-downs/
| leoedin wrote:
| This could also have good use for ground source heat pumps -
| they're the most efficient, robust and consistent source of
| domestic heating we have, but require fairly deep (60m ish)
| boreholes. If digging could be quicker, easier or faster these
| heat pumps could be installed everywhere.
| hectormalot wrote:
| I have one of those. The well is 170m deep. Took 2 guys about
| half a day to drill it, so that actually doesn't seem
| excessive in terms of time required (mostly sand, no rock
| below my house).
| NavinF wrote:
| I assume you mean "2 guys and some heavy equipment"? As a
| kid it took me a whole summer of on-and-off digging to make
| a 1 meter deep hole for fun.
| dpark wrote:
| Out of curiosity, what were you digging with? Unless you
| were digging with a toy sand shovel or making a very
| large hole, that seems like a very long time.
|
| As a kid, my cousin, my sister, and myself were able to
| dig a hole deep enough for me to be completely inside in
| an hour or two using a post hole digger. (Yes, this is a
| _very_ stupid idea.)
| NavinF wrote:
| A shovel. I couldn't get past 1m because of the rocks
| were too difficult to shatter.
| jmacd wrote:
| You have to make sure it's straight, drop sheathing in to
| the hole, and then cap it if it isn't going to be used
| right away.
|
| More importantly, geothermal/ground source is rarely 1
| well either, in our case it was 8.
| oliveshell wrote:
| That's what they mean. My neighbor had one drilled and
| the contractors showed up with a huge well-drilling
| truck.
|
| It's just a huge vertical drill with segments you add on
| as it goes deeper, like an oil well drill.
| hectormalot wrote:
| Correct, it's big but I wouldn't say huge (maybe
| 4.5x2.5m). This is the machine they used: https://conrad-
| stanen.nl/nl/producten/boxer-200
| tinco wrote:
| Awesome! Do you sink heat into it during the summer, or do
| you also use it for airco?
| hectormalot wrote:
| Sink directly into it for the summer. Heat exchanger
| between the source (approx 10-15C) and the water from the
| floor heating/cooling system. Because the heat pump is
| not involved it's very efficient (only the power of the
| well pump)
|
| I'm actually considering if it makes sense to push a lot
| more heat into it in the summer (Deliberately leaving
| curtains open, then moving this heat into the well; or
| even PVT panels), but I'm not sure if the well would
| retain heat long enough to make a difference towards the
| winter.
| OJFord wrote:
| They can also be horizontal, covering a larger area at a much
| shallower depth.
| meltedcapacitor wrote:
| Indeed horizontal (pipe network, like underfloor heating in
| reverse) is the most efficient solution, digging deep is
| for when the plot is too small or otherwise encumbered (or
| if one sits on top of a volcano).
| tinco wrote:
| A 60m borehole is not a source of energy, it is a store of
| energy. It only makes sense if you can sink enough heat into
| it in the summer, to use that energy in the winter. Or vice
| versa in warmer climates.
| jmacd wrote:
| We have a ground source heat pump and one summer we were
| away and did not use out air conditioning that year much at
| all. Mid winter our return loop temperatures (the glycol
| being brought in to our heat pump after circulating in the
| ground) was at one point 3 degrees C cooler than it had
| been any other year. Quite a noticeable difference. For
| reference, our loops are 8 vertical at 250ft.
| FredPret wrote:
| Wait, do you need _eight_ 250ft wells?
| tinco wrote:
| Yeah for a family home that seems about right. 250ft is
| not very deep at all, and you need to store a _lot_ of
| energy to past a whole winter /summer.
| bjourne wrote:
| Couldn't we have one big plant with a large hole that
| distributes heat to surrounding homes?
| happytiger wrote:
| Except this technology is for after you get to the plate of
| rock at the bottom of topsoil unfortunately. They mentioned
| it in the article. You use conventional drilling to get to
| depth first.
| theptip wrote:
| Very interesting context here, thanks. Do you know of any
| write-ups that give a deeper picture of the progress of any of
| these (or other similar) projects? It seems that there are
| tough problems to be solved, but we're just seeing the
| marketing materials.
| fly-guy wrote:
| Another thing that should be considered: how do you keep the
| hole open while drilling? At extreme P and T, the hole will
| close in on the drillstring. Also, fluids turn very nasty in
| those conditions. You'll need some unobtanium and some of
| Superman's suit material.
| kragen wrote:
| Conventional "mechanical" drilling isn't very heat tolerant
| because heat softens metal. For oil and even gas drilling it
| doesn't need to be; they're located in cooler rock. For
| supercritical steam EGS heat tolerance is a sine qua non.
| Conventional approaches might still work best, but it's also
| plausible that what's best for gas isn't best for EGS.
| raducu wrote:
| But if we get to temperatures that destory metals, isn't it
| enough?
|
| Why don't we drill to whatever is the termal limit, make a
| big cavity there, install radiators there and just heat the
| watter to that temperature and take it out to surface where
| we can heat homes.
|
| I know this is done in Bucharest for a water park (to much
| lesser depths because apparently we have hot springs near
| Bucharest).
|
| Do we need to reach magma?
| kragen wrote:
| This is about running your air conditioner, charging your
| Tesla, and molding your kitchen sink, not heating homes.
| Think Carnot efficiency, power density, supercritical
| steam, and shutting down gas pipelines.
|
| And the temperature to destroy steel under the immense
| mechanical stress of a drill string is surprisingly modest.
| Jet fuel can't melt steel beams, but softening them is
| enough.
| aaronblohowiak wrote:
| In a fire, A wooden ladder remains viable king after an
| aluminum one! Soft happens WAY before melt
| iancmceachern wrote:
| Thermal mass and thermal conductivity also play a role in
| this example. Two more reasons a wooden ladder is better
| in this scenario. For ladders at the same temperature,
| the aluminum one would conduct more thermal energy,
| quicker, into a user's hand then a Wooden one. Making a
| wooden one more usable for longer in this scenario even
| though the aluminum one would technically last longer.
|
| This is why wooden sauna seats work well, aluminum seats
| in the sauna would not go over so well.
|
| Lots to consider when solving thermal problems, it's not
| just about turning up the dial to be able to withstand
| more heat. Sometimes it's about the nuance of moving the
| heat efficiently and putting it where it's wanted, and
| not where it isnt.
| Retric wrote:
| Metals start to get weaker at relatively low temperatures.
| https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/metal-temperature-
| strengt... We want to extract 100's of MW of heat which
| presents several issues.
|
| You need a thermal gradient to move heat from the
| surrounding rock to the water your pumping in. The higher
| the initial temperature the larger the difference and
| therefore faster you can extract heat. Aka even if the
| working fluid is at a constant temperature you can simply
| pump it faster.
|
| Also, Carnot efficiency limits means you want the hottest
| steam you can handle. Further, you have various
| inefficiencies such as losing heat as water moves back up a
| borehole.
| JulianMorrison wrote:
| Steel in particular softens at a much lower temperature
| than it melts. And it doesn't need to soften much to make a
| really long thin drill bit bend.
| irq-1 wrote:
| > Do we need to reach magma?
|
| Nope. Over the last ~20 years the drilling industry has
| gotten good at: angle drilling (not slant drilling but
| turning the drill angle at the bottom) and fracking, or
| pumping fluid through rock to break it up. This means
| conventional methods can dig far down, turn the drill and
| make a reserve with fracking. The heat is much less but
| it's conventional technology.
|
| https://www.ted.com/talks/jamie_c_beard_the_untapped_energy
| _...
| unfocussed_mike wrote:
| > Do we need to reach magma?
|
| Nooo --- don't dig the Well to Hell!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Well_to_Hell_hoax
| derefr wrote:
| > Anything that works would be used by the oil and gas
| industry, and if they're not trying it, one suspects it might
| not be working.
|
| To flip that around: this would imply that the most under-
| investigated-in-industry approaches to deep hole boring would
| be the ones that destroy the economic value of any oil-and-gas
| in the ground, no? Ones that make the ground radioactive,
| perhaps. Or that would set any potential oil fields on fire, or
| react them away, or irrevocably mix a combustion-inhibiting
| azeotropic solvent into them.
| WJW wrote:
| > this would imply that the most under-investigated-in-
| industry approaches to deep hole boring would be the ones
| that destroy the economic value of any oil-and-gas in the
| ground,
|
| That is only one explanation to why a technology would be
| among the most under-investigated-in-industry approaches.
| There are many others, such as:
|
| - It does not work at all.
|
| - It is more expensive than traditional methods
|
| - It is illegal in some way
|
| - It is incompatible with the rest of oil&gas processing.
| XorNot wrote:
| Option C: it doesn't solve enough problems for oil and gas
| to have been worth pursuing compared to iterative
| improvements to existing systems.
|
| Whereas for geothermal, conventional drilling isn't useful
| enough for it.
| peterburkimsher wrote:
| Oil companies sell finite fuel for energy to people in
| cars, on the move.
|
| Geothermal heating provides unlimited fuel for people in
| houses, staying still.
|
| The technology is similar, and it's boring ;-) The market
| is different. This is an opportunity for entrepreneurs to
| hire expert drilling engineers out of the oil industry!
| ijidak wrote:
| > Geothermal heating provides unlimited fuel for people
| in houses, staying still
|
| This sounds like the beginning of a great sci-fi novel.
|
| A future where Earth's core has cooled because of excess
| draws to power humanity. Now, the planet is losing it's
| magnetic field.
|
| To save humanity, humans need to re-heat the core, build
| biospheres, or leave the planet.
| blibble wrote:
| sounds similar to the plot of The Core
|
| (it was not great)
| kbenson wrote:
| It's surprising how often that movie comes up, especially
| given how it's often accompanied by a note that it's not
| good. I suspect it's hit a pseudo-cult classic film
| status. The last few times I've seen it mentioned I've
| had the desire to seek it out and watch it again since I
| only remember bits and pieces.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| That's what you get when you do a lot of publicity for a
| movie that is not good.
| peterburkimsher wrote:
| Do you think that reheating the core of Mars could reboot
| life there?
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30476002
|
| It's even more interesting that you mention the magnetic
| field, could we use solar panels to draw more energy from
| the sun to power a tesla coil and microwave the core?
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _" A future where Earth's core has cooled because of
| excess draws to power humanity."_
|
| Has anyone done the napkin math for how long that would
| take?
| marcosdumay wrote:
| We basically can not accelerate the process. Almost all
| the resistance to heat movement is on layers we can not
| reach at all.
| peterburkimsher wrote:
| About as long as it would take to cool the surface of the
| sun.
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2013/04/28/the-
| center...
|
| Core of earth: 6,000 oC
|
| https://www.space.com/why-sun-atmosphere-hotter-than-
| surface
|
| Core of sun: 27 million oC Surface of sun: 6,000 oC
|
| "The leading idea among experts is the sun's magnetic
| field is actually bringing energy from inside the sun up
| through its surface and into its atmosphere."
|
| The "napkin math" will involve gathering some data about
| RF power harvesting, and some assumptions (e.g. cosmic
| rays)
|
| https://news.mit.edu/2020/energy-harvesting-wi-fi-
| power-0327
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_law_of_thermodynamics
|
| Do you believe in the 1st law of thermodynamics, that
| energy is neither created nor destroyed?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-electron_universe
|
| We could just balance the system:
|
| core of Earth too hot -> use geothermal
|
| core of Earth too cold -> use solar power
| semi-extrinsic wrote:
| Don't worry, we were doing nuclear fracking back in the days.
| Everything that could work has been tried for oil and gas
| exploration.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Gasbuggy
|
| Regarding drilling operations that destroy value: you're
| forgetting that drilling is 1D while oil fields are 3D
| (technically quasi-2D with horizontal dimensions 100x to
| 1000x larger than vertical dimensions). If your drilling
| messes up everything in a 10 meter radius from the drill
| string, you don't care.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > Don't worry, we were doing nuclear fracking back in the
| days. Everything that could work has been tried for oil and
| gas exploration.
|
| Likewise, everything that conceivably _could_ be done with
| nuclear was tried or at least designed for a while there -
| lighting watches with radium, digging canals with nukes,
| space travel by continuously exploding nukes behind you...
| good times. (Horrifying times, but w /e;])
| dhosek wrote:
| Not to mention https://gajitz.com/1950s-radioactive-
| science-kit-most-danger...
| joshuacc wrote:
| Why do you think that drilling is one dimensional? Drilling
| at an angle, and even at gradually changing angles is
| common.
| tomrod wrote:
| Technically embedded in that case, as your drill line can
| be represented (often) by a single parameterized
| function.
| semi-extrinsic wrote:
| Exactly. Unless you plan to zizag around all over the
| place, most of the reservoir won't be in the near-well
| region.
| hedora wrote:
| I've long wanted to put some money into an eco terror fund.
|
| It would buy controlling interests in all the companies that
| make some critical, specialized and heavily patented piece of
| modern internal combustion engines or coal turbines. Then,
| it'd wreck the factories, and patent troll everyone else into
| not producing.
|
| Money is speech, and that would be protected political
| speech, right? :-)
| hedora wrote:
| Once it had demonstrated enough success to instill fear in
| the hearts of wall street bankers, I think it could start
| turning a profit. It would announce targets ahead of time,
| tanking the stock. On the way down, the companies would
| reinvest the money they make selling themselves for parts
| back into the fund.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| You're not going to tank a stock by publicly telling
| people you're going to buy a bunch of it. A bunch of
| people will try to get in front of you and bid you up.
| blibble wrote:
| that will result in those devices will be manufactured by
| the Chinese instead, and them then having a near monopoly
| InDemoVeritas wrote:
| As my wise auntie says,"You can't see clearly through the
| bottom of a pint glass." Are you not drunk on energy? Warm
| or cool at will, well fed and clothed, able to travel and
| communicate? There's no collecting if you bet on the
| apocalypse. <\wisdomnag>
| javajosh wrote:
| _> There's no collecting if you bet on the apocalypse._
|
| That's just not true. Misery and suffering is it's own
| reward, to some. This is arguably the main point of
| Orwell's 1984, when O'Brien explains to Winston Smith
| _why_ they bother torturing people before killing them. O
| 'Brien says that to knowingly cause suffering in someone
| is the ultimate expression of _power_ , and it is
| axiomatic to him that _power_ is good in-and-of-itself.
| Schroedingersat wrote:
| Assuming this works, tech still won't save us alone.
|
| Pure thermal (ie. just energy, no GHG) climate change is right
| around the corner if energy use keeps going up exponentially and
| we keep reducing earth's albedo.
|
| Ecosystems are still being obliterated for cattle and mining.
|
| All ghg free electricity will do is buy a few decades to end (and
| in the west, reverse) growth. Possibly the only thing that will
| give civilisation a chance to find a solution, but not a
| solution.
|
| We should be finding ways for people in the west to live more
| like developing nations and still thrive, not trying to turn
| developing nations into the west.
| eru wrote:
| > Pure thermal (ie. just energy, no GHG) climate change is
| right around the corner if energy use keeps going up
| exponentially and we keep reducing earth's albedo.
|
| What makes you think so? What growth rates are you assuming?
| How long is your time horizon?
| napier wrote:
| If and when we get to that point various theoretical methods
| are available for bleeding off surplus heat; one of them is
| aiming a neutron beam at the moon. One upside of all this
| learning the hard way via profligate energy generation and
| accidental geoengineering taking place since the industrial
| revolution is that it opens the door to possibilities of
| regulating the impact of Milankovitch cycles on our
| civilization and biosphere.
| eru wrote:
| If you can concentrate energy, eg into a neutron beam, then
| it's not waste heat. It's a form of energy you still can
| get useful energy out of.
|
| The only thing you can do with true waste heat on the scale
| of earth is to radiate it into space.
|
| You might want to look into eg
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics
| napier wrote:
| My comment was written with precisely the second law of
| thermodynamics in mind. If you're generating energy at a
| rate greater than you have a use for, to the point that
| you have a problem, yet also able to harvest it, then you
| want to radiate it back into space, yes. Neutron beams
| would be a cool, perhaps fanciful yet potentially
| practical way of doing that in a concentrated manner.
| findingaway wrote:
| Taking just a step back and looking at our societies, I can't
| help but agree with this viewpoint.
|
| Our psychic and material conditions are poised to get worse as
| we rapaciously exploit the natural resources of the planet and
| destroy the fabric of life across it (not just the casual
| culprits like extinction, but the general accruing debt of
| pollution and degradation across the biosphere). Further,our
| global civilization and the supply lines that enable it (gas,
| water + sewage, electricity, connectivity) exist in an
| equilibrium we're actively disrupting.
|
| Another thing to consider is that our biology has adapted for a
| vastly different experience of environment and society than
| those we inhabit.
|
| The patterns of human civilization need to change drastically
| for it to be extant and thriving in 100 years.
| axiolite wrote:
| > right around the corner if energy use keeps going up
| exponentially and we keep reducing earth's albedo.
|
| That's a big if. In fact things like deforestation increase
| albedo. And when we get closer to that point, we can start
| requiring actively increasing albedo of all human structures.
|
| Projecting out our current habits along a trend line all the
| way to our doom is utterly naive... It's a bit like a
| lumberjack hundreds of years ago complaining that if we keep
| building log cabins, we'll run out of lumber. What actually
| happens is, when resources start to become constraints, THEN we
| suddenly start finding ways to conserve them, NOT before. And
| before it happens, it's not obvious to those looking ahead just
| how it can and will be dealt with.
|
| > We should be finding ways for people in the west to live more
| like developing nations and still thrive, not trying to turn
| developing nations into the west.
|
| "Developing nations" are among the worst polluters. That's
| probably not what you mean. Poor, underdeveloped nations have
| relatively small global environmental impacts, but very intense
| local impacts... Local deforestation and other resource
| exhaustion, for example. That's not a good model to copy,
| either.
|
| There are possible technological solutions to deal with our
| impact, and on the time-scales we're talking about,
| possibilities like colonization of other worlds, and gradually
| towing the Earth out to a wider (and cooler) orbit.
| sacrosancty wrote:
| Data or it didn't happen. A statement as extreme as "a few
| decades to end growth" without a citation is best treated as a
| hysterical opinion than a fact.
| axiolite wrote:
| "if we confine ourselves to the Earth's surface, we exhaust
| solar potential in 400 years" --
| https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/07/galactic-scale-energy/
|
| Equally interesting:
|
| https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/07/can-economic-growth-last/
| erosenbe0 wrote:
| Pure thermal caused by non fossil fuel human energy use? I've
| never heard that as a thing. But ghg climate change causing ice
| and snow melt, thereby reducing albedo and causing thermal
| effects, yes scary.
| danans wrote:
| A recent podcast interview with Quaise energy's CEO.
|
| https://www.woodmac.com/news/opinion/the-interchange-recharg...
| theptip wrote:
| The idea of drilling deep geothermal to repurpose existing fossil
| plants is an elegant one. I imagine others have thought of this
| before, but it was new to me. Being able to take over the
| existing equipment (turbines, power transmission connections)
| seems appealing.
|
| Of course, it all depends on how expensive the drilling process
| is vs. the existing capital asset in the turbines, but maybe you
| could hit a price point where the repurposed geothermal plant is
| way cheaper than new solar / gas builds in the 2030s? This would
| be a transitional tailwind, just when we need it. Down the road,
| these plants would become more expensive because you'd also need
| to build new turbines/transmission lines. And at that time maybe
| solar or fusion is a cheaper solution (or not, who knows). But
| this could really help with the transition away from fossil
| fuels, if it was delivered next decade or two.
|
| A question - does deep drilling like this have any downsides, as
| fracking does? I'm guessing it's less bad since you're not
| pushing pressurized fluid into the bedrock, instead you're just
| making a pipe that contains the water.
| irq-1 wrote:
| It's also the drilling industry. There are millions of skill
| people and a worldwide supply chain already setup. As a bonus,
| these are the same companies and people who would lose their
| jobs when drilling for oil and gas is overtaken by geothermal.
| fly-guy wrote:
| ENergy conversion equipment can't easily be re-purposed for
| geothermal. The temperatures are usually much lower, and the
| working fluids are often hydrocarbons instead of steam.
| theptip wrote:
| Quaise seems to think it's possible:
|
| > "What we intend to do is go to existing power plants--it
| could be a coal power plant, it could be a gas power plant,
| any of the thousands of fossil-fired power plants that exists
| in the United States and around the world--and we will
| propose to them to create a small geothermal field around
| them, which is matched to the turbine specification of the
| power plant. What comes out of the ground is steam that feeds
| into the turbine, and the rest is what they've always done.
| The turbine creates electricity. The plant is already
| connected to the grid,"
|
| https://www.powermag.com/a-game-changing-vision-for-
| geotherm...
|
| Could just be marketing fluff; I'm not an expert here. But
| don't coal plants exclusively use steam turbines?
|
| Edit: Seems that lots of energy in the US comes from steam
| turbines:
| https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/how-
| electric....
| raxxorrax wrote:
| > Meanwhile, the heat vitrifies the side of the hole, turning it
| essentially into a glass pipe
|
| I think this is pretty essential and maybe even more important
| than the depth. Until now it was not economically feasible
| because the porous rock did swallow a lot of the circulated water
| in such a drilling. But this technique seems to solve that
| problem pretty effectively.
| fly-guy wrote:
| Conventional boreholes are cased with steel and cement.
| Vitrified walls would theoretically save that material cost (if
| it actually worked)
| sandos wrote:
| Is this really, really renewable? I thought the heat down there
| was stored from before and will eventually peter out...
|
| We might all be dead by then but hey... not renewable!
| anonporridge wrote:
| Something I've always wondered.
|
| Wouldn't massive scale geothermal end up pumping _more_ heat into
| the atmosphere that otherwise wouldn 't be there?
|
| In contrast, the energy collected by solar and wind generators is
| from the energy added to Earth by the sun and would be energy in
| our atmosphere regardless of whether or not we collect it.
|
| But it seems like the heat inside the Earth's core should be
| fairly well insulated by the lithosphere, and it only slowly
| leaks out over time. If we start pulling that energy out at a
| faster rate to generate electricity, could that have a noticeable
| net increase on total energy under the atmosphere, or is it such
| an insignificant amount of energy relative to the sun's to not
| even bother worrying about?
| hattmall wrote:
| That's a pretty solid question. I really don't know but
| hopefully someone else can answer. My guy hypothesis though is
| that even for all of our energy demands the amount pulled out
| would be pretty negligible. The reason being that only like
| 0.1% of the earth covered with solar panels would meet all our
| energy demands and heat wise geothermal should be much more
| efficient. The issue with heat and global warming isn't the
| actual heat it's the thicker atmosphere not letting it
| dissipate fast enough.
| erosenbe0 wrote:
| It's a non issue. But suppose you had a localized gigawatt
| leak into some wetlands. That would be trouble.
| tinco wrote:
| You are correct in that the earth core is really well insulated
| from the surface. So well that the light of the sun delivers an
| order of magnitude more energy per M2 to the Earth's surface.
|
| That information also answers your question, our problem isn't
| with the amount heat we produce, it's with how much of that
| solar radiation we trap in our atmosphere due to the green
| house effect of CO2 and similar gases.
|
| So yeah we introduce a little bit more heat by drawing from the
| Earth's core, but it's nothing compared to what trapping the
| sun's energy with CO2 is doing to the planet right now.
|
| Conversely using that energy to remove CO2 from the atmosphere
| might even cool the planet, but that's a question for the next
| generation.
| darkerside wrote:
| Turning on the car activates the heat but lets us open the
| window
| anonporridge wrote:
| I've had the thought for a while now that it might be a good
| idea to start changing the climate change narrative to a
| problem of planetary heat engineering, not simply a problem
| of GHG reduction.
|
| The current narrative is largely defeatist and regressive.
| It's largely about rolling back growth and the amount of
| energy civilization has harnessed.
|
| But if the narrative was altered to be a heat engineering
| problem, then it fundamentally changes how we think about it.
| Removing CO2 (insulation) is one option, but so are projects
| like solar reflection or some other forms of heat dissipation
| or heat sinking.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Insolation is on the order of 100 petawatts.
|
| Human energy utilization is on the order of 20 terawatts,
| 0.02% of the power the sunlight that hits the atmosphere.
| Our energy utilization doesn't matter a lot.
| wongarsu wrote:
| There are certainly cases where a more holistic view is
| very important. For example a plan to plant trees in the
| Sahara desert, irrigated by desalination plants powered by
| solar, at first glance seems like a "reasonable" plan to
| sequester carbon. But once you account for the fact that
| the desert reflects a lot more light then trees do it
| actually looks like it would accelerate global warming. The
| plan gets kind of "saved" once you consider the effects of
| the new forest on weather patterns: the trees cause more
| clouds to form which are quite reflective and bring the
| plan back into the green, but not enough to be useful.
|
| So not a great plan, but a great example of how some of the
| solutions can be a lot more complex than just "remove CO2".
| At the same time any plan that cools without removing CO2
| (e.g. planetary sunshades[1]) have the downside that they
| don't solve ocean acidification.
|
| 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_sunshade
| rland wrote:
| I think there are other effects of increased CO2
| concentration that are not well understood and could be
| catastrophic. Like ocean acidification. That actually
| scares me far more than the heat aspect.
| erosenbe0 wrote:
| It's also a bit more difficult to diffuse out of
| classrooms and such with 400+ ppm background vs 300ppm.
| At what threshold it affects alertness, cognition, or
| motivation is disputed.
| ben_w wrote:
| "Threshold" implies an on-off response, the various
| research papers I've seen indicated it has a continuous
| response.
| labster wrote:
| > not well understood and could be catastrophic. Like
| ocean acidification
|
| Look up carbonate compensation depth, your mind will be
| blown. Yes, researchers understand the effects of climate
| change because they have been looking at it for 40+
| years. Being extra worried about climate change is a lot
| like climate denial, in that it doesn't show trust in our
| scientists. There is no need to invent trouble -- the
| challenges we know we will face are hard enough.
| andi999 wrote:
| From 1000ppm ppl get dumb.
| anonporridge wrote:
| I think we're deep into the territory of "literally
| anything we choose to do or not do is going to create a
| never ending game of whack-a-mole unintended
| consequences".
|
| We own the fate of our civilization and the environment
| it relies on.
|
| It's time to take ownership and stop cowering in the
| cave.
| FooBarBizBazz wrote:
| High CO2 concentrations have other effects too, including
| ocean acidification and cognitive impairment.
| goda90 wrote:
| And crop nutrient depletion
| NumberWangMan wrote:
| I agree, there is a big defeatist and regressive narrative.
| But some of us do focus on the positive -- we can fix this,
| and fix a lot of other problems at the same time, and _it
| 's not even that costly if we do it right_, gradually
| switching our energy sources over time and gradually
| changing our living habits where we're willing. People
| always talk about a carbon tax, because it's a really,
| really good idea: it is very economically efficient, is
| targeted like a laser at the real problem, and will have
| huge benefits even just in terms of reducing premature
| deaths from particulate pollution.
|
| The reason I think stopping use of fossil fuels is really
| the only reasonable solution, or is at least a necessary
| part of any solution, is that anything else is like trying
| to fix your car accelerating out of control by just driving
| around with one foot on the brake. Trying to balance the
| increased greenhouse effect by blocking sunlight _might_
| work a bit, but there are all sorts of ways it can go wrong
| -- it creates a moral hazard where everyone will have less
| incentive to stop using fossil fuels and thus continue
| making the root cause of the problem worse, and we have to
| keep doing it forever -- stopping means a sudden massive
| amount of climate change that people won 't have time to
| adjust to. There are so many really easy ways that we can
| cut our emissions massively, with technology we have
| available today, with virtually no impact on our living
| standards. The rest will take some time and technological
| improvements, but it's all doable!
|
| And I've not heard of any sort of heat dissipation geo-
| engineering ideas -- the only feasible way I know of to get
| the earth's heat dissipation back to normal is to take off
| this extra blanket of greenhouse gases we've put on it. Any
| sort of heat dissipation would have to transfer heat to the
| upper atmosphere without being absorbed by CO2, and I don't
| think there's any way we could do that at the scale
| required to have a noticeable effect.
| philipswood wrote:
| I personally like the idea of a satellite swarm that can
| tweak (in a controlled manner) 2% of incoming solar
| radiation.
|
| An artificial ring system for earth made out of reflective
| satellites.
| YawningAngel wrote:
| All the geoengineering we might do is totally unproven and
| untested. If the alternative is a calamity then yes, of
| course we'll do it. As things stand, it seems like we
| should be putting as much effort as we can into the thing
| we know works (reducing greenhouse gas emissions).
| gumby wrote:
| > GHG reduction
|
| The fixation on GHG reduction is, as a friend of mine puts
| it, a suicide pact, simply reducing the second derivative.
| Unfortunately it's easy to understand and discuss, so
| that's where all the attention goes.
|
| The issue of climate repair (and long term curation,
| unfortunately) seems to frighten lots of people. There are
| people working on it, but they are a small community.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| Keywords for learning more about 'climate repair'?
| gumby wrote:
| Literally "climate repair" and "climate restoration".
| Some NGOs to check out include the Centre for Climate
| Repair at Cambridge and Foundation for Climate
| restoration.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| Thank you.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| The current narrative is intentionally defeatist because
| it's promoted by fossil fuel interests to serve their short
| term interests.
|
| People who aren't interested in prolonging our use of
| fossil fuels are instead excited about the cheapest energy
| in history that renewables provide.
| Joeri wrote:
| Alright, I'll try to pitch the counter argument.
|
| The current green movement narrative is the same it has
| always been: living within our means. The current fossil
| fuel driven economy is objectively unsustainable.
|
| Yes, you can geo-engineer your way out of the heat problem,
| but that doesn't solve all the other problems resulting
| from unsustainable growth, and who knows what fresh
| problems this will create. What the green movement wants
| and has always wanted is a conservative growth model, where
| the growth is not based on the depletion of finite
| resources. It is mostly the promoters of unsustainable
| growth that twist this into an anti-growth narrative.
|
| Now, techno-optimists say we can solve the problems created
| by unsustainable growth with more technology, and this may
| be true. But it is asking everyone to take a pretty large
| gamble on technology that does not exist yet. The
| conservative strategy is sustainability, and that goes much
| wider than just solving climate change.
| popcube wrote:
| yes, until now, scientists always can save us. but they
| just need one time...
| hedora wrote:
| Scientists have done more than enough. The issue now is
| entrenched interests blocking progress.
|
| We had all the technology we needed to go carbon neutral
| back in the 1980's. Back then, even the American
| Petroleum Institute (yes, the planet burners) were
| raising alarms over CO2 and global warming.
|
| We have many technological doublings ahead of us before
| technology fails to provide opportunities for growth.
| That's not the problem.
|
| The problem is that our economic system is terrible at
| pricing in externalities.
|
| Edit: Come to think of it, the American Petroleum
| Institute scientists said the exact same thing back then.
| Skip to the last page:
|
| https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3483045-AQ-9-Task
| -Fo...
| freedomben wrote:
| We may have had the technology in the 80s, but the
| economics is only just getting close. We could have
| switched but it would have meant a _drastic_ reduction in
| quality of life for everyone who wasn 't rich. We might
| still be in 80/90s technology had we done that, because
| the wealthier we are as a society, the faster we can
| develop technology.
| totetsu wrote:
| I'm reminded of this story of how the Chicago River ended
| up being electrified.
|
| https://www.npr.org/2021/02/09/965335352/from-
| electrifying-r...
| oceanplexian wrote:
| There is no such thing as sustainable growth.
|
| Eventually, one day, sooner or later a very unsustainable
| chunk of high speed space rock will hit the planet and
| wipe us out, or some other completely natural and "green"
| disaster, like a supervolcanic eruption, as has happened
| repeatedly in history. The only thing that will matter is
| if we advance our technology to a point to divert the
| problem or make ourselves sufficiently resilient from the
| problem. There is no "if" here, it's statistically
| guaranteed.
|
| As far as I know, the best way for humanity to advance
| technology is with growth. More people with a higher
| standard of living means more teachers, scientists,
| artists, engineers, and leaders. We need those people
| because hiding in a cave is exactly the wrong thing to
| do.
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| I think if you are talking at that time scale, the
| imperative for humanity in particular to be the one to
| make that advancement is just anthro vanity. The history
| of humanity is such a relatively brief thing on the
| cosmic scale you are talking about, and yet in our brief
| time we have screwed things up massively for ourselves.
| But not necessarily for future species and human-like
| life.
|
| Its ok if we don't make it guys, there was species before
| us, and there will be some after us. The universe is
| vast. We are probably not even that special, but we can
| do our best and enjoy life and try to minimize the
| suffering that will certainly happen from our mistakes...
| to want to "win" anything beyond that will just cause
| more suffering.
|
| Its ok to admit we messed up, we couldn't know at the
| time that a global capitalism predicated on an unlimited
| nature would not end up great, the timeline of scientific
| discovery was not in out favor there. On all accounts we
| are most likely too late, its not anyone in particulars
| fault, its ok.
|
| Time is very vast, that can scare you or humble you.
| 3pt14159 wrote:
| > The only thing that will matter is if we advance our
| technology
|
| This is your objective to meet your end which is
| survival. I don't agree with it, but I'll respond as if I
| took it for a given.
|
| > As far as I know, the best way for humanity to advance
| technology is with growth.
|
| What you mean by growth here matters. More people with a
| higher standard of living is two types of growth. One is
| economic the other is population. But there are other
| dimensions to grow across.
|
| For example, peacefulness has produced just outstanding
| yields in many valuable areas such as productivity,
| research, and ecological protection. But peacefulness did
| not arise out of nothing. It took _lives_ to create our
| world which is peaceful for most people. Real people
| working on arms control agreements and diplomacy.
|
| Improving education is similar. You could argue that
| education requires resources, and that is true to a
| point, but we are well, well past that point. North Korea
| is capable of nuclear weapons and rocketry. Most
| elementary school programs can get by on $100 worth of
| reusable books a year and some paper and pens.
|
| Now the green model has some fatal flaws, and there is a
| reason I'm a Canadian Liberal not a Green, but the core
| thrust of Green thinking is a good thing in my opinion
| because I've found that, in general, prevention is more
| efficient than cure because it's easier to align
| incentives with prevention.
|
| One of the problems with incentive alignment is that the
| international system is anarchistic and individual
| choices are unpredictable and given over to passions that
| are often unethical. This leads to unavoidable arms races
| (literal and figurative) across multiple aspects of
| society and politics.
|
| So, for example, China builds new coal power plants
| because they're in a power competition with the West and
| to build wind turbines instead would cost a non-trivial
| portion of their GDP and institutional focus.
|
| Anyway, in summary, yes with what you outlined as your
| objective economic growth matters, but so do other forms
| of growth. I would even include spiritual growth (or
| decline) matter too. People are acting incredibly
| sanctimonious and paranoid right now and it isn't helping
| their more charitable instincts.
| freedomben wrote:
| I tend to agree with you philosophically, but when it
| comes to implementation that's where I really struggle.
| How do you curtail either of the two types of growth? It
| seems like the only options include authoritarian and
| borderline human rights violating. A group of progressive
| countries could band together and try to invade China and
| force them to slow their growth, but even ignoring the
| ethicality of forcing our will on others, most people
| would agree that the death and suffering would be pretty
| bad.
|
| So far the best form of population control has been
| prosperity. Birth rates tend to fall as quality of life
| goes up (not always of course because there are many
| factors in that). The other option is outlawing
| reproduction much like China did for a long time. That
| seems questionable re: human rights also.
| FredPret wrote:
| From this point of view, which I certainly share, the
| responsible thing to do is to grow as fast as humanly
| possible until we are spread far and wide across the
| solar system, while also hedging our bets and making an
| effort to grow in the cleanest way that doesn't slow us
| down.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Grow fast, but sustainable enough that we don't collapse
| society before we have self-sustaining colonies beyond
| earth. Then rinse and repeat.
| pards wrote:
| Watch "Don't look up"
| Archelaos wrote:
| The heat is not the problem. It radiates into space quite
| quickly. The current world energy supply per year is over 160
| TWh.[1] By comparison, the erruption of Mount Tambora in 1815
| released aprox. 237.5 times more energy in a single incident
| (~38 PWh).[2] The problem at that time was not an extended
| (regional) heat wave, but the substances that entered the
| atmosphere and remained there for several years, causing a
| global weather change.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_supply_and_consum...
|
| [2] Other less spectacular examples: 160 TWh is equivalent of 5
| to 6 times the energy released by the Mt. St. Helens erruption
| of 1980 (~28 TWh) or the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake (~30.6
| TWh), or half of the energy released by the 1883 eruption of
| Krakatoa (~232 TWh), or 1/4 of all nuclear bomb explosions so
| far (628 TWh). For this an other examples see:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TNT_equivalent
| ComradePhil wrote:
| Solar is also trapping more energy than what would never be
| there. If the sun's rays just hit the ground, a portion of it
| would be reflected back. We're using dark material to aborb
| most of what would be reflected back and we end up trapping
| more energy than we should... Solar panels are around 15%
| efficient, which means 85% of this trapped energy is
| immediately converted to heat, heating the local environment...
| and the part which becomes electricity eventually gets
| converted to heat as well (no matter what you use it for).
|
| So, only ones I can think of which don't add additional heat to
| the planed may be wind and hydro.
| erosenbe0 wrote:
| Already been there done that. Asphalt roads and roofs do this
| en masse and create some slight overnight heat storage in
| urban environments. Solar is just a marginal addition I
| believe.
| kragen wrote:
| Also, much more importantly, oceans.
| usrusr wrote:
| If you've ever driven on a road approaching a hillside
| photovoltaics installation from the east at just the right
| time in the afternoon when it projects the sun right into
| traffic, you wouldn't be so sure to assume that 100% of
| incoming photons go either to electricity or to heat... but
| yeah, high albedo photovoltaic might be an interesting
| research topic. We have semi-translucent panels that seem to
| only sacrifice so much efficiency, some room for high albedo
| should exist (probably not much). Market would of course be
| people showing off that they can afford different looks, like
| those musk-shingles. But efficiency also dereases with
| temperature, so perhaps this might be another angle ?
| Invoking the impact on total earth albedo certainly won't
| drive any buying decisions, tragedy of the commons and all
| that...
| tjoff wrote:
| So 0% reflection?
| wffurr wrote:
| Both wind and hydro convert kinetic energy into electricity
| and heat. The heat is from the moving parts in the turbines
| and the power conversion electronics. Heat is a product of
| just about every energy conversion you can imagine.
| anonporridge wrote:
| Good point.
|
| I wonder if solar energy is going to need to install high
| albedo surface area to offset it's low albedo energy
| absorption to satisfy some future version of ESG constraints.
| ravi-delia wrote:
| Except, you know, 100% of the energy obtained by fossil fuels
| also eventually becomes waste heat. All of our electricity
| consumption and production is a rounding error to the earth.
| Global warming only works because the Sun can do most of the
| work.
| jstimpfle wrote:
| Is that a problem though? What percentage of earth surface
| would be covered by solar panels if the world went 100%
| solar?
| visarga wrote:
| How is that different from nuclear?
| dan_mctree wrote:
| The amount of heat in the atmosphere at any point doesn't
| really matter all that much for global warming. What matters is
| the break-even point between the amount of energy we gain from
| and lose to space. Since the earth emits more energy if it's
| warmer (black body radiation), the break-even point relates to
| the temperature of the earth. If we change something about the
| earth's in or output of energy, the earth's temperature will
| naturally rise until the break even point is reached again.
|
| By introducing greenhouse gasses, we are affecting earth's
| ability to radiate energy to space and thus the temperature at
| which we have our break-even point. Should all greenhouse
| gasses disappear, the earth would rapidly start cooling until
| it reaches its new break-even point.
| gmuslera wrote:
| We aren't talking about a system with an evenly distributed
| energy. It wouldn't be life on Earth if the global
| temperature average was between what is now the temperature
| of the atmosphere, and all the ones below surface. As long as
| the thermal isolation remains in place it shouldn't be a
| problem and the biggest foe should be the unbalance between
| heat in and heat out from sun/space, but what if we do a big
| scale and sustained thermal transfer between the core and the
| surface?
|
| I know, I'm oversimplifying a lot, and the orders of what
| humans can do may be dwarfed by any volcanic eruption, but it
| should be a safe margin at some point at which the scale and
| time of heat transfer with underground may start to affect
| global average temperature.
| kragen wrote:
| It could. The available fossil sensible heat energy is
| something like hundreds of millions of years of sunlight. Right
| now geothermal is uneconomic except in special situations, and
| human world marketed energy consumption is four orders of
| magnitude smaller than insolation, so it's not yet a practical
| concern.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| It's not significant indeed. Imagine a balloon the size of the
| earth and pricking a tiny hole in it. Does it 1) rapidly
| deflate, or 2) does not change measurably in size at all for
| millions/billions of years? Replace your mental model of a
| balloon with that of a massive amount of hot stuff surrounded
| by a thin crust and you have your answer.
|
| Geothermal works pretty well anywhere from a technical point of
| view. The main issue is that drilling holes is expensive. There
| is a company called Eavor that is actually re-purposing former
| (failed) oil drilling attempts to get a head start on that.
| That is smart. Even so, they are on the expensive side of the
| spectrum. It's just a lot of capital expenses to get to warm
| enough temperatures that you can get steam to drive a turbine.
| And of course you need either a lot of holes or a very big one
| to scale it.
|
| Eavor claims that they are going to be essential for baseload.
| IMHO they might be too expensive for that but we'll see if they
| can lower their cost over time.
| Uily wrote:
| Yes, but it will be orders of magnitude less than the sum total
| energy of solar energy across the total surface of the earth.
| eru wrote:
| Similarly:
|
| Nuclear power plants, as nearly all power plants, work by
| heating water. That heat has to go somewhere eventually.
|
| But the amounts you'd need to make any difference to the
| atmosphere (compared to solar radiation) would be truly
| humongous.
| anonporridge wrote:
| I don't know if this would be any extra heat, because the
| radioactive material would already be decaying anyway if it
| was left in its natural state. Maybe the same problem where
| radioactive material would be left mostly underground and
| insulated where its heat would leak slowly.
|
| Then again, part of the Earth's core heat comes form
| radioactive decay. So in a way, geothermal is an indirect
| form of nuclear fission.
| eru wrote:
| Nuclear power plants don't just capture the energy from
| natural decay.
|
| Though the precise mechanism doesn't matter too much for
| my comment. Just assume I'm talking about fusion plants.
| anonporridge wrote:
| Yeah. All civilization consumes around 17 TW of energy while
| the sun is constantly bombarding the Earth with 173,000 TW.
|
| We could rebase all of civilization on geothermal and the
| extra heat in the atmosphere would be a rounding error to the
| sun's energy.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| So if our energy consumption increases by 4% per year
| (current global average) for ~110 years, we'd need to
| capture / produce as much energy as the Sun hits us with.
| Crazy!
| [deleted]
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| That would also mean going from kilowatts per person to
| megawatts per person, so yeah that's pretty crazy.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| I don't think "it's a rounding error" is enough analysis
| here. A couple of meters of sea level rise, a couple of
| degrees temperature rise; these could be termed rounding
| errors.
| anonporridge wrote:
| It's far less than the variance of direct solar
| irradiation hitting the Earth given varying differences
| in distance from the sun in the Earth's orbit. https://en
| .wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_constant#Solar_irradianc...
|
| It looks like direct solar radiance is actually 173,000
| TW plus or minus 6,000 TW.
| Retric wrote:
| Not degrees, thousandths of a degree, so possibly
| something like a centimeter if sea level rise.
|
| Considering nuclear and fossil fuels directly release
| stored energy and solar increase albido this isn't a 1:1
| increase in energy. Further the earth radiates more
| energy from hot places than cool, still you can
| approximate it as something like:
|
| Black body radiation is temperature in kelvin to the 4th
| power. (285 * (170,017^0.25 / 170,000^0.25) - 285) is an
| increase of ~0.007 C / (whatever our current percentage
| of energy from fossil fuels, nuclear, or solar).
| Glawen wrote:
| Yeah right. They drilled in Strasbourg, France, to get this
| "free" energy. When they entered production, the city was
| experiencing an earthquake every month, waking the city at night.
| After a magnitude 4 earthquake, they finally shut down the plant.
|
| A town in Germany is devastated also due to geothermal power:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staufen_im_Breisgau
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| I believe you may have missed what these folks are doing
| differently.
|
| To put it into context, geothermal energy that taps underground
| water reservoirs near heat sources has been shown to cause
| earthquakes and other not good side effects. All of those
| effects are associated with water being released from aquifers
| that were previously sealed, or ground changes due to water
| incursion into previously dry structures (which happened in the
| reference German town). These guys however are digging _below_
| all of that. In fact finding water that near the surface would
| likely cause them to determine the location unsuitable.
|
| Modern geothermal plants are "binary" in that they have their
| own water loop which goes down, gets heated, and then comes
| back as steam. A good explainer is here:
| https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/geothermal/geothermal-po...
|
| What these guys propose doing is essentially drilling into rock
| 6+ miles down. That is about 5 to 10 times deeper than current
| plants. Using the heat from the rock which is near 1000 degrees
| to heat water that they pump through it into steam and recover
| through the turbines. The whole "pipe" from well head to return
| is nominally sealed with the vitrified walls created by the
| microwaving process.
|
| Let's assume (and I don't know since I don't work for these
| guys but we need numbers if we're going to guess at things)
| that their "drilling" with microwaves technology leaves behind
| a 12" diameter hole that is > 6 miles deep. And we can drill
| two of those holes in such a way that they meet at their
| maximum depth. I'm imagining holes that start on the surface
| 100+ yards (or meters) apart drilled with a slight angle to
| meet when they are 6+ miles deep. How much power could we
| expect to get out of that?
|
| So let's do a little math, water weighs about .03621 lbs/cubic
| inch. And a 1ft tall, 1ft diameter cylinder of water would way
| about 49 lbs. A mile is 5280 feet so a mile high column of
| water, 12" in diameter, would weigh 258,851 lbs, and a 6 mile
| high column would weigh 1,553,283 lbs (a bit under 777 tons) so
| the force at the bottom of the column would be about 13,734
| psi. At 935F it would pretty much instantly convert to 'dry'
| steam, and could likely be recovered at about 10,000psi on the
| other side of the well.
|
| It has been a long time since I had to figure out from a steam
| table how much energy was extractable from super heated steam,
| but it is a lot. It goes through the turbine, piped through a
| cooling tower to condense it back into water, and then dropped
| back into the source hole.
|
| The risk of earthquakes and other geo-technical disturbances is
| minimized by what is essentially a closed loop system.
|
| Now it is true that you're going to cool the crust (energy is
| conserved after all and if you're running turbines it means the
| crust is cooling) the question then is how quickly is that heat
| returned by other actions. And of course if you were to pull
| "all" the energy out fast enough this way you could presumably
| "freeze" the core of the Earth and that would be a bad thing,
| but we're talking about way more energy than the entire world
| consumes in a centuries and I'm not sure how to judge that risk
| compared to the heat generation mechanisms inside the planet.
| An actual geologist probably has an idea.
| mkl wrote:
| > Let's assume (and I don't know since I don't work for these
| guys but we need numbers if we're going to guess at things)
| that their "drilling" with microwaves technology leaves
| behind a 12" diameter hole that is > 6 miles deep. And we can
| drill two of those holes in such a way that they meet at
| their maximum depth. I'm imagining holes that start on the
| surface 100+ yards (or meters) apart drilled with a slight
| angle to meet when they are 6+ miles deep.
|
| I'm doubtful that any drilling process can be that straight
| and accurate unless straight lines are inherent in the
| drilling process (e.g. lasers somehow). Just think of how
| much trouble they had drilling to those stranded Chilean
| miners to rescue them, only 700m down: https://en.wikipedia.o
| rg/wiki/2010_Copiap%C3%B3_mining_accid...
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| That is entirely fair. And per @animats comment it isn't
| clear they have managed to do anything "new" yet.
|
| That said, microwaves (like lasers) do tend to go straight.
| So from the point they start using them going forward, I
| would expect it to be possible (not easy, but possible) to
| keep them in a straight path.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > That said, microwaves (like lasers) do tend to go
| straight.
|
| Actually, none of them do. Cutting equipment (even after
| adapted to drilling) is heavily focused on the near
| region, usually a few cm away. On distances larger than a
| few cm, they are no more self-aligning than any
| mechanical drill.
| fly-guy wrote:
| Great start, but one important factor is missing from this
| analysis: The surface area (for heat exchange) of a closed-
| loop borehole is tiny compared to the surface area in a
| natural hydrothermal system. The walls of the borehole will
| cool off relatively quickly due to the low thermal
| conductivity of rock, and you'll soon be unable to make
| power. Conventional geothermal gets around this by pulling
| from very large reservoirs that include natural convection
| and huge fracture surface area.
|
| This means that a closed loop system needs many many many
| miles of boreholes in order to last long enough to pay off.
| juanjmanfredi wrote:
| I'm not sure I understand. Could you point me to a resource
| that goes into more detail?
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| You may be right. Back of the envelope kinds of computation
| though, 6 miles of 12" diameter bore hole is 99,525 sq ft
| of surface area for thermal transfer. If you think of the
| lower half of that as the heat injection surface (so 3
| miles -> 6 miles and then back up to 3 miles on the way
| out) call it 100k sqft of rock surface. Now some people
| have spent a lot of time studying rock
| (https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/1988/0441/report.pdf) I'm not one
| of them (more of a casual geologist because I like hiking
| in the mountains) but if I'm reading the heat transfer
| equations from pg 91 of that report it still seems like
| you'd get a decent amount of heat transfer (order of 10's
| of MJ) into the water.
| eru wrote:
| Assuming this is a real problem, wouldn't you just put your
| geothermal power plant well outside of any city?
|
| Doesn't even have to be somewhere where there are no buildings.
| Just somewhere where hardening the few existing buildings
| against small earthquakes etc won't be too expensive.
| Glawen wrote:
| The goal of the plant was to provide heat for Strasbourg, so
| it has to be near the city.
| eru wrote:
| Yes. Originally I typed a longer version of my comment that
| had a section on heat vs electricity.
|
| Basically, the idea I proposed would only work for
| generating electricity, not for using the heat directly.
| Stevvo wrote:
| Many countries have almost no wilderness left; everything is
| either urban or agriculture or mountains with no convenient
| place for an earthquake.
| pm90 wrote:
| Seismic disturbances are generally a concern for dense
| urban areas. It seems unlikely that agricultural areas
| would care that much.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "It seems unlikely that agricultural areas would care
| that much."
|
| Why would you think that? Because the peasants are all
| too stupid to notice an earthquake that damage their
| houses?
|
| Sure, fewer people would be affected, than in a dense
| city, but the problem solution of: out of sight, out of
| mind, is fascinating.
| pm90 wrote:
| > Why would you think that? Because the peasants are all
| too stupid to notice an earthquake that damage their
| houses?
|
| Yes, exactly. I also don't expect dense residential
| buildings prone to earthquakes to be prevalent in low
| density sparsely populated agricultural areas.
|
| There is nothing "fascinating" except that stating facts
| about rural areas immediately brings out the worst kinds
| of trolls out of the woodwork.
| eru wrote:
| You know that you can earthquake proof buildings?
|
| Offer to do that plus a bit of extra money on top, and
| you'll find plenty of rural takers. Pick the cheapest
| bidder.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| There surely are various solutions and it _is_ also a
| solution to shift side effects to areas where fewer
| people are affected (and more easily compensated) - but
| the tone of that statement above was "who cares for
| rural areas" at least I read it like this, because why
| else would rural people not care about it?
| numpad0 wrote:
| Agriculture relies on stable water supply...
| wongarsu wrote:
| In Germany you will be hard-pressed to find a place more
| than 10km/6mi from the nearest village with more than 500
| inhabitants. Those people don't like earthquakes or
| cracked buildings either. Same thing in England.
| eru wrote:
| Pay to earthquake proof their building and give them a
| bit of extra money on top. It's not that hard. Have a
| sort of auction to see who in the vicinity it willing to
| accept the geothermal plant for the cheapest.
|
| Keep in mind that Germany has plenty of open pit lignite
| mines. Like eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Schle
| enhain_coal_mine
|
| The disruption from geothermal is minuscule by
| comparison.
| topspin wrote:
| Is there any conceivable burden urbanites don't imagine
| the people and land outside urban areas can tolerate?
|
| We don't live in grass yurts you know. Bridges and dams
| are a thing. Earthquakes _are_ a problem. Deep fracking
| operations have demonstrated this already.
| eru wrote:
| Huh? Read my comment. I did not suggest there are no
| building in non-urban areas. Just fewer, and thus it
| would be less expensive to make them earthquake proof.
|
| Japan deals with natural earthquakes all the time.
| Earthquakes stronger than whatever a bit of geothermal
| energy production would produce.
| masklinn wrote:
| Because Japan deals with natural earthquakes all the
| time, japan has quake-safety standards. They were written
| in blood, and don't exist in places which don't routinely
| have earthquakes, because quake safety is constraining
| and expensive.
|
| Retrofitting an entire country for quake safety because
| you've decided to create artificial earthquakes is inane.
| eru wrote:
| Who suggested an entire country? We are talking about
| small-ish areas.
| masklinn wrote:
| You have literally no idea how wide the geological
| destabilisation would reach.
| pm90 wrote:
| > We don't live in grass yurts you know. Bridges and dams
| are a thing. Earthquakes are a problem. Deep fracking
| operations have demonstrated this already.
|
| What percentage of rural areas are situated in close
| proximity to large dams and bridges?
| masklinn wrote:
| Your statement is unclear, are you saying it doesn't
| matter if dams and bridges get destroyed, or that it
| doesn't matter if rural habitations get destroyed as long
| as they're not destroyed near infrastructure?
| pm90 wrote:
| It's perfectly clear if you read it without trying to be
| deliberately obtuse.
| re6fae5Wied5tha wrote:
| > Is there any conceivable burden urbanites don't imagine
| the people and land outside urban areas can tolerate?
|
| The burden of wealth.
| Fiahil wrote:
| > Just somewhere where hardening the few existing buildings
| against small earthquakes etc won't be too expensive.
|
| So, expending twice on a bad idea ? Seriously, what do you
| think will happen ?
|
| And even it was technically possible, how do you insure a
| company like that ? Will the plant operator be responsible
| for the repairs and damages when they destabilize an entire
| region ?
| eru wrote:
| > So, expending twice on a bad idea ? Seriously, what do
| you think will happen ?
|
| What do you mean? A few really minor earthquakes are all
| that was reported by the comment I was replying to. So I'd
| assume more really minor earthquakes.
|
| > And even it was technically possible, how do you insure a
| company like that ?
|
| The usual way of paying an insurance company?
|
| > Will the plant operator be responsible for the repairs
| and damages when they destabilize an entire region ?
|
| Depends on the jurisdiction. But sure, you can make the
| plant operator responsible for that and responsible for
| having gigantic insurance coverage.
|
| (Just look at whatever liability people who operate dams
| have today. A breakage of a major dam would also devastate
| entire regions. So whatever arrangements are good enough
| for that use case are probably good enough here.)
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| I don't think the "entire region"s involved would be big
| enough to make insurance difficult to implement.
| modeless wrote:
| It seems like this is a real problem:
| https://news.stanford.edu/2019/05/23/lessons-south-korea-
| sol...
|
| That said, it also seems like this proposed technique is very
| different and probably wouldn't have the same issues.
| masklinn wrote:
| > Assuming this is a real problem, wouldn't you just put your
| geothermal power plant well outside of any city?
|
| The US' fracking experiments show "well outside of any city"
| is nowhere near enough.
| eru wrote:
| Why? How much damage has been done?
| masklinn wrote:
| In every state where fracking got authorised, earthquakes
| above 3.0 have increased by an order of magnitude (or
| even appeared where they were considered essentially
| inexistent).
|
| Hundreds if not thousands of buildings have been damaged
| across OK and TX because they'd been built with no quake
| resistance as they'd been built in zones considered
| inactive, insurers have jacked up their rates and the
| USGS had to revise their risk maps.
|
| The risk to populations is also non-negligible, because
| aside from a lack of quake-proof constructions the
| populations are not trained for or aware of quake safety
| for the same reason that the areas are historically
| stable.
|
| I don't think that's happened yet in the US (as no
| fracking quake has exceeded 5.0 yet), but in 2019
| fracking started killing people in china: the Sichuan
| basin, historically a geologically very stable region,
| got hit with 4 quakes between 4.9 and 6.0, at least 15
| died and hundreds were injured.
| eru wrote:
| Thanks!
|
| Seems all pretty manageable on the humongous scale of
| 'this could be our main source of energy'.
|
| Eg burning coal or oil kills a lot more people directly
| and indirectly.
| aaomidi wrote:
| Heh, interesting mix of this and the Broken Earth series by NK
| Jemisin.
| greyface- wrote:
| Tom Scott did a video on Staufen im Breisgau in 2017:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOgle88sKro
| karaterobot wrote:
| Assuming this technology works, it's worth that risk. To be
| fair, that's a big assumption; most things don't. Meanwhile,
| already past the point of no return, the inconvenient situation
| with our climate gets worse while we try to negotiate. This is
| probably nothing, but it's worth trying.
|
| At the end of this article, there's a bit about the "tech won't
| save us" crowd. Not saying you're in it, just that it surprises
| me that such a thing could exist at all. At this point, what
| the hell else could save us? God, positivity, bans on plastic
| straws?
| sdfjkl wrote:
| They drilled too deep and too greedily.
| coolso wrote:
| This is why pushback against climate change policies is, I
| believe, a healthy thing. Yes, protecting the environment is
| super important, but time and time again we are told to trust
| the science, trust the experts, everything is going to go
| exactly as planned. And time and time again, it turns out the
| experts didn't account for this, or for that, or were just flat
| out wrong, and then everyone pays for the "oops".
|
| We see this with everything: social policy, monetary policy,
| tax policy, etc.
|
| I think a public online resource that documents instances like
| this, where the experts, or the government, told us X, but it
| ended up being Y, would be a really powerful tool to fight back
| against folks who treat science like an infallible religion.
| croes wrote:
| >This is why pushback against climate change policies is, I
| believe, a healthy thing.
|
| No, it's not. In the past we did next to nothing and we now
| see the consequences. We may fail if we try, but we are
| guaranteed to fail if we don't.
|
| And science is like democracy, it's not perfect sometimes
| even bad, but it's still the best we have. Everything else is
| worse.
| visarga wrote:
| You can't have discovery without taking risks, and you can't
| generalize one problem to the other problems. Keeping the
| status quo has its own cost.
| goodpoint wrote:
| > Yes, protecting the environment is super important, but
| time and time again we are told to trust the science
|
| What's the alternative? Trust big oil companies instead?
| octoberfranklin wrote:
| > a really powerful tool to fight back against folks who
| treat science like an infallible religion.
|
| The only tool needed for that is a really simple one: a
| bumper sticker that says "when you mix science and politics
| you get politics".
|
| People who can't grok that are not going to come around.
| stareatgoats wrote:
| The Staufen im Breisgau mishap is one of the learning
| experiences of geothermal energy, like analyzing the type of
| rock that you plan to drill through, and maybe not drill in a
| town center.
|
| But apart from that, you seem to have misinterpreted the Quaise
| technology, mixing apples and oranges. This is not conventional
| drilling which can cause water to flow into adjacent rock (not
| to mention fracking which deliberately cracks the bedrock to
| allow water to flow through).
|
| This technology is vaporizing the rock and at the same time
| creating a sealed shaft which funnels the water directly to the
| great depths where the water can reach supercritical steam
| state, and so avoiding the issues that caused the Staufen im
| Breisgau mishap.
| Glawen wrote:
| A conventional drill can be cemented as well, the technology
| is already existing but mishap happened anyway
|
| Another town near Strasbourg is devastated like staufen Im
| breigsbau: Lochwiller. With the same issue as staufen, except
| that in this case it was a family who drilled to heat their
| home.
| hackernewds wrote:
| are you telling me a family drilled to heat their home and
| caused earthquake? that sounds absurd
| derac wrote:
| The straufen issue wasn't an earthquake. A chemical
| reaction occured when water mixed with an anhydrous
| layer, causing the ground to swell up to 12 inches per
| the linked wiki article.
| usrusr wrote:
| The really interesting question might sound even more
| absurd: did that earthquake release stress that would
| have been released sooner or (worse:) later anyways?
| Should people affected by the earthquake thank the family
| for releasing stress before more accumulate?
| darkerside wrote:
| Not absurd. Do you think the same might apply to quakes
| caused by fracking?
| usrusr wrote:
| That's literally what I've been wondering next. The
| question marks where genuine, not rhetoric.
|
| (I can't claim that this is always the case with my
| question marks, so I'm in no position to complain if they
| are not taken at face value)
| gumby wrote:
| > The problem is it has only been practical in volcanic regions
| or near the edges of tectonic plates, where cracks in the Earth's
| crust allow steam to form close to the surface like in Iceland or
| the geysers in California.
|
| Incredibly, California has managed to kill its geysers.
| Apparently when Geyserville was settled there were puffs of steam
| coming out all over the place. Now the geothermal plant there
| injects wastewater into the rock and then drives its turbine with
| the steam that comes back.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| This sounds like cool tech, and the re-use of the existing
| generation assets is clever, but just running costs of the steam
| part of an existing plant struggles to compete on a financial
| basis with wind turbines and solar PV so it'll probably only ever
| be a niche thing.
|
| Shared ground loops connected to heat pumps are a more boring
| tech with more potential to have a global scale impact.
| erosenbe0 wrote:
| You cut out the combustion stack and boiler here so it has to
| be much cheaper than fossil fuel turbine?
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| I wasn't even counting the combustion part, just the heat to
| steam to electricity part (common to coal and nuclear
| plants).
|
| I had assumed they would need to transfer the heat rather
| than pipe geothermal steam directly into the turbine, but
| either way, solar and wind is very cheap and hard to compete
| with. Even magical free energy connected to a steam turbine
| struggles when you do the sums, which is the baseline before
| you start including cost and risk from super deep drilling.
| p1mrx wrote:
| Assuming that people commit to buying 24/7 carbon-free energy
| at any price, on-demand generation like geothermal will be
| quite valuable during the times when wind and solar are
| underperforming.
|
| So geothermal will mainly compete with nuclear and storage, not
| wind and solar.
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