How Humans Cause (and Prevent) Earthquakes

The best-known case is the earthquake caused by the Zipingpu Dam, in China’s Sichuan province, in 2008. Zipingpu held 42.3 billion cubic feet of water, the weight of which precipitated what Klose says is the largest human-triggered earthquake to date: a 7.9-magnitude quake that killed nearly 80,000 people. Klose estimates that Zipingpu, with nearly 320 million tons of water pressing down on a fault line, contributed enough stress to trigger the quake through a process called impoundment. “If you push your finger on top of a paper plate, the plate will bend,” he says. “That same effect works on all the tectonic plates on the Earth’s crust.” The quake occurred two years after the dam’s completion, and its epicenter was a mere three miles from the structure.

Authorities in Basel, Switzerland, shut down the city’s geothermal plant after a 3.4 quake in 2006. Tapping geothermal energy involves boring into rock miles beneath the Earth’s crust in search of steam as a source of energy. Engineers in areas without much water, such as Basel, sometimes create boreholes by way of hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” which involves forcefully injecting water to create fissures. Fracking can generate small tremors, but the real damage may happen as excess liquid pools in the cracks between rocks, making them less stable. Although dams have caused some 76 earthquakes, mining is responsible for at least 137 earthquakes, over half the number of man-made quakes to date.

In 1989 a 5.6-magnitude earthquake hit Newcastle, Australia, the direct result of coal mining. Extracting millions of tons of coal added stress to the fault lines, but the real danger resulted from the water that was extracted during mining. For each ton of coal produced, Klose estimates, 4.3 times as much water was pumped out of the ground, a necessary step to prevent flooding inside the mine. But removing so much water dramatically altered the stability of the earth surrounding the mine. Klose says the earthquake caused $3.5 billion in damage—an amount that nearly equaled the profit of all the coal produced by the mine over its 200-year history. _PopSci

More here

Other human-caused micro-quakes have occurred via deep well injection of fluids, and by experimental deep hydraulic fracturing into crystalline rock (such as granite) near faults. It should be noted that shale fracturing -- such as is done for oil & gas production -- has not produced a causal link to earthquakes.

The recent small quakes in the Youngstown, Ohio area are associated with deep well injection of waste fluids -- a completely different process from shale fracturing.

Unfortunately, a large part of the news media has reported the quakes as having been caused by shale fracturing -- which is not the case. This type of skanky behaviour by news media is nothing new, but one has to wonder whether it is caused by ignorance or by willful deception.

We expect the faux environmental and green sites to misreport such events -- out of both ignorance and willful deception, depending upon the outlet. But in the case of the Ohio micro-quakes, normally careful sites such as oilprice.com, slate.com, and other mainstream outlets produced news copy that was not fit for a third grade newsletter, due to the inaccuracies. This is a troubling trend that should be watched very carefully.

It has been shown for decades that deep fluid injection into the crust can induce micro-quakes, if it takes place near known and discovered faults. And of all energy-related drilling, the type most closely associated with inducing micro-quakes is geothermal -- both enhanced and the geyser type. Deep CO2 injection is likewise liable to induce micro-quakes. Shale fracturing is probably the least likely cause of micro-quakes due to the more shallow nature and due to the type of rock involved.

But if one wishes to be absolutely sure that one is not performing shale fracturing near a fault zone, a thorough seismic survey (for about $10 million) can be done prior to any drilling. Clearly a less expensive method of reassuring the panicky public, skankstream media, and less than honest environmental media is needed.

Scientific research is the best antidote to the type of superstitions being purveyed by the modern skankstream.

Some European experience:

The data generally support the view that injection in sedimentary rocks tends to be less seismogenic than in crystalline rocks. In both cases, the presence of faults near the wells that allow pressures to penetrate significant distances vertically and laterally can be expected to increase the risk of producing felt events. All cases of injection into crystalline rocks produce seismic events, albeit usually of non-damaging magnitudes, and all crystalline rock masses were found to be critically stressed, regardless of the strength of their seismogenic responses to injection. Thus, these data suggest that criticality of stress, whilst a necessary condition for producing earthquakes that would disturb (or be felt by) the local population, is not a sufficient condition. The data considered here are not fully consistent with the concept that injection into deeper crystalline formations tends to produce larger magnitude events. The data are too few to evaluate the combined effect of depth and injected fluid volume on the size of the largest events. Injection at sites with low natural seismicity, defined by the expectation that the local peak ground acceleration has less than a 10% chance of exceeding 0.07 g in 50 years, has not produced felt events. _Geothermics

Enhanced geothermal drilling is a far greater micro-earthquake hazard than is any drilling or fracturing in porous shale for oil & gas. But even so, it is best to avoid overreacting to the risk, but rather to plan deep drilling and hydraulic fracturing of crystalline rock very carefully, to minimise risks.

The risk of overreaction to the risks inherent in deep geothermal projects is very real. The establishment of an overly harsh regulatory framework would penalize the geothermal industry in comparison to other energy sectors that carry a recognized risk of inducing seismicity, such as gas extraction or coal mining.

From their outset, EGS projects need to be thought of both as pilot projects with scientific unknowns and as commercial ventures with technological and financial risks. Companies need to have allocated enough of their budget to scientific investigations not directly related to the exploitation of heat. Local authorities need to avoid being enticed by the promises of alternative energy, and to remember to ask the right questions. Risk evaluations need to be done before — not after — these projects begin. _Nature

In such cases where the risks are small but clear, appropriate care must be used in conjunction with any deep geothermal drilling, or deep well injections -- particularly near fault zones.

But the risks of shale drilling and fracturing are completely different -- and orders of magnitude smaller -- than the risks of drilling and fracturing crystalline rock such as granite. If regulatory agencies rush in to ban economically important procedures which have been demonstrated to be safe over decades of experience and geological testing, they will be doing a grave disservice to their constituents.

Can Humans Get Over Their Fears of Small Earthquakes?

Scientists are continuously thinking of ways to try and reduce earthquake power. Some are trying to lessen the friction between colliding plates. They poured water down a fault where two plates were grinding together. The water “lubricated” the fault, letting one piece jerk free with a number of little earthquakes and preventing a large tremor. _EarthquakePrevention

If humans can get over their fears of small earthquakes, they could reap the bounty of huge amounts of energy beneath their feet, of multiple types.

Geothermal energy from EGS represents a large, indigenous resource that can provide base-load electric power and heat at a level that can have a major impact on the United States, while incurring minimal environmental impacts. With a reasonable investment in R&D, EGS could provide 100 GWe or more of cost-competitive generating capacity in the next 50 years. Further, EGS provides a secure source of power for the long term that would help protect America against economic instabilities resulting from fuel price fluctuations or supply disruptions. Most of the key technical requirements to make EGS work economically over a wide area of the country are in effect, with remaining goals easily within reach. _MIT Report 14 MB PDF

100 GWe is roughly the amount of power generated by 100 large nuclear reactors -- or several hundred small modular reactors. Geothermal power is available 24 hours a day, as baseload ... load following ... or peaking power. It is the ultimate non-nuclear, non-carbon power source -- if humans could only get over their fears of small earthquakes.

Small earthquakes can be frightening to children and those who have not grown accustomed to them. But the right succession of small earthquakes can relieve enough stress on crustal faults to prevent, delay, or mitigate the effect, of larger quakes that were destined to occur. Earthquake prevention is a difficult science due to the multiple interlocking crustal faults at varying depth -- many of which have not yet been discovered.

The fear of triggering small earthquakes has become a tremendous obstacle -- both to the development of rich new energy resources, and to the exciting new field of seismic exploratory activity aimed at eventually preventing large quakes. Energy starvationists of the green lefty-luddite dieoff.orgiast persuasion in particular, have been quick to seize on the common primal fear of small earthquakes, in order to shut down promising, reliable new sources of energy.

Geothermal energy can be tapped in multiple ways:

The Geysers Field north of San Francisco is home to more than a dozen large power plants that have been tapping naturally occurring steam reservoirs to produce electricity for more than 40 years.

However, newer technologies and drilling methods can now be used to develop resources in a wider range of geologic conditions, allowing reliable production of clean energy at temperatures as low as 100C (212F) - and in regions not previously considered suitable for geothermal energy production.

Preliminary data released from the SMU study in October 2010 revealed the existence of a geothermal resource under the state of West Virginia equivalent to the state's existing (primarily coal-based) power supply.

...Three recent technological developments already have sparked geothermal development in areas with little or no tectonic activity or volcanism:

1. Low Temperature Hydrothermal - Energy is produced from areas with naturally occurring high fluid volumes at temperatures ranging from less than boiling to 150C (300F). This application is currently producing energy in Alaska, Oregon, Idaho and Utah.

2. Geopressure and Coproduced Fluids Geothermal - Oil and/or natural gas are produced together with electricity generated from hot geothermal fluids drawn from the same well. Systems are installed or being installed in Wyoming, North Dakota, Utah, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas.

3. Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) - Areas with low fluid content, but high temperatures of more than 150C (300F), are "enhanced" with injection of fluid and other reservoir engineering techniques. EGS resources are typically deeper than hydrothermal and represent the largest share of total geothermal resources capable of supporting larger capacity power plants. _Geothermal Promise

More information at this helpful Google enhanced geothermal website, including videos and links to information on some of the latest research and technologies.

Geothermal power at the Geysers in Lake County, California, has been associated with thousands of tiny earthquakes above magnitude 1 since 1975 when the resource was tapped. But earthquakes are triggered by a number of different things, including the construction of hydroelectric dams.

Depth of the reservoir is the most important factor, but the volume of water also plays a significant role in triggering earthquakes.
RIS [Reservoir Induced Seismicity] can be immediately noticed during filling periods of reservoirs.
RIS can happen immediately after the filling of a reservoir or after a certain time lag.

It would be best for humans to invest in the best accelerated research possible to clearly and unequivocally define the risks and benefits of small scale induced seismicity. One of the best ways of doing this would be for seismic scientists to work closely with deep drilling enterprises which also involve the deep injection of fluids into the earth's crust. By piggy-backing onto economic activity which is already being done, seismologists can increase the detail of their seismic maps, and can also collect abundant data on the impact of deep crustal fluid injection into different fault configurations.

Over 100 Gigawatts of New Electrical Generation Capacity Discovered!

100 Gigawatts of genuine, baseload, 24 hour a day, 7 day a week available power generation capacity has been sitting under our noses all along, waiting for someone crafty enough and ambitious enough to utilise it. Here is how it works out:

Scientists at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Guangzho have determined that abandoned oil wells offer an average of 54 kW of electrical power. And with over 2.5 million abandoned oil wells in the US alone, that works out to over 100 GW of electrical power capacity, standing by for anyone willing to install the necessary plumbing and small generators.

Old oil and gas wells often plunge several kilometres deep to reach reserves. Refitting their shafts to circulate water could provide an easy way to extract this energy, says Xianbiao Bu and colleagues from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Guangzho.

The team proposes a pipe-within-a-pipe design. Water would flow down one pipe to the bottom of the well, heat up and then be pumped up an inner pipe to the surface, where it would drive a turbine (Renewable Energy, DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2011.10.009).

Xianbiao believes that a typical well could produce around 54 kilowatts of electricity - not much compared to a full-sized power plant running on coal, gas or nuclear energy. But with an estimated 2.5 million abandoned oil and gas wells in the US alone, huge stores of energy could be going untapped. _NewScientist

This resource is not a centralised GW scale power source, such as a nuclear or coal power plant. But the availability of a reliable source of power -- which might easily add to MW scales in many areas -- could easily provide a financial focus for meaningful economical activity.

And here is an idea that will make EROEI aficionados unhappy: Reliable, decentralised power in old oil fields might be put to use in the production of new oil wells. It is said that the best place to look for new oil, is where old oil has been found. What an irony if geothermal electricity using abandoned oil wells puts a new spin on those words.

US Potential for Geothermal Power 32 Million Times Higher than Present!

USGS estimates 500,000 MWe of EGS geothermal resource potential lies beneath the western United States. This is approximately half of the current installed electric power generating capacity in the United States.
_EERE PDF

EERE PDF Enhanced Geo Basics
The US could be producing 32 million times more geothermal electrical power than it does at present.

The U.S. produces more than 100,000 gigawatt-hours per year of geothermal electricity already, but it could produce as much as 3.2 trillion gigawatt-hours.

...the Earth's heat never stops—meaning a geothermal power plant can produce electricity as regularly as a nuclear power plant can. And it also has nearly no emissions of the greenhouse gases causing climate change. _SciAm

Geothermal power plants are currently located in areas with natural hot springs and geysers, such as this planned 15MW plant in the US state Nevada.
Enhanced geothermal will be a whole new ballgame. That is where the lion's share of geothermal power can be tapped, but it will require expensive deep drilling technology which has not yet been perfected for this purpose. It will also require new forms of ultra-deep fraccing of hot rock, to enhance deep crustal heat exchange for energy extraction.

The hazard of earthquate-triggering is routinely hyped and inflated, as is natural whenever a genuinely revolutionary energy technology is considered. But deep geothermal drilling cannot create new seismic faults where none exist, nor will the technology increase tension on pre-existing faults. Enhanced geothermal can either drill in seismically active -- or seismically inactive regions. In the inactive regions, there is no problem. For seismically active locations, the technology of enhanced geothermal is more likely to prevent large earthquakes, by facilitating smaller tension-relieving quakes.

The potential is certainly there. But the technology and the economics needs to catch up to the potential. That will take time and investment. By transferring all investment away from wasteful and ineffectual wind and solar, over to technologies with solid 24 hour / 365 day baseload potential, society would be taking a big step forward.

Buying Heat from the Devil In The Age of Global Warming

NewEnergyandFuel

Southern Methodists Locate Gate to Hell in West Virginia

Traditional folklore tells us about "gates to hell" which provide the devil ready access to the human world. Some scientists are wondering if these hellgates might be put to good use. A 2007 MIT study found that exploitable geothermal heat resources could provide a significant portion of future heat and power needs for North America. Now, scientists from the Geothermal Lab of the Southern Methodist University have located an area in West Virginia with elevated crustal temperatures and heat flow. A detailed mapping of bottom hole temperatures from oil and gas wells has clarified the view of potential geothermal resources, as part of an ongoing effort to create an update of the Geothermal Map of North America (GMNA)

The GMNA was developed from roughly 3,600 heat flow and 12,000 BHT data measurements along with regional thermal conductivity models. However, large areas of the Central and Eastern United States contain few data points and have been under sampled in all previous national geothermal resource assessments. Since the previous GMNA data sets were completed, approximately 7,500 new data points have been analyzed and currently more are being processed for this project. The data was collected from oil, gas, water, and thermal gradient wells from New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Michigan. As a result of the new heat flow determinations, estimates of heat content and MWe potential for Michigan, Pennsylvania and West Virginia are substantially increased. _SMU

More from Brian Westenhaus:

The high temperature zones beneath West Virginia revealed by the new mapping are concentrated in the eastern portion of the state. Starting at depths of 4.5 km (greater than 15,000 feet), temperatures reach over 150°C (300°F), which is hot enough for commercial geothermal power production.

Blackwell continues, “The early West Virginia research is very promising but we still need more information about local geological conditions to refine estimates of the magnitude, distribution, and commercial significance of their geothermal resource.”

Zachary Frone, an SMU graduate student researching the area said, “More detailed research on subsurface characteristics like depth, fluids, structure and rock properties will help determine the best methods for harnessing geothermal energy in West Virginia.” The next step in evaluating the resource will be to locate specific target sites for focused investigations to validate the information used to calculate the geothermal energy potential in this study.

Of added significance the team’s work may also shed light on other similar geothermal resources. “We now know that two zones of Appalachian age structures are hot — West Virginia and a large zone covering the intersection of Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana known as the Ouachita Mountain region,” said Blackwell. “Right now we don’t have the data to fill in the area in between,” Blackwell continued, “but it’s possible we could see similar results over an even larger area.” Lets hope the research finds a large extent of fast rising heat for geothermal production in the Eastern US _NewEnergyandFuel

Google provided a grant to the SMU Geothermal Lab to do the study. But who will give the devil his due, when humans start stealing heat from these nether regions? Will Google? Will the southern methodists? Stay tuned.

Life Without the Sun? Yes, If We Learn to Think

Ring of Fire
We like to say that life on Earth could not survive without the sun, but that isn't actually true. Without the sun the surface of the planet would freeze down to a certain depth, but the amount of energy contained in the molten planetary core could provide ample heat and electric power to maintain human civilisation for hundreds of thousands of years or longer.

From the western US to Australia (Queensland and Victoria), Indonesia, the Phillipines, Kamchatka, Alaska, and New Zealand, the Pacific Ring of Fire makes thermal energy available to much of the world's population. Similar "rings of fire" over the rest of the Earth extends this ample fund of energy to Europe, western and central Asia, and parts of Africa.

Jefferson Tester: The figure for the whole world is on the order of 100 million exojoules or quads [a quad is one quadrillion BTUs]. This is the part that would be useable. We now use worldwide just over 400 exojoules per year. So you do the math, and you know you've got a very big source of energy.

How much of that massive resource base could we usefully extract? Imagine that only a fraction of a percent comes out. It's still big. A tenth of a percent is 100,000 quads. You have access to a tremendous amount of stored energy. And assessment studies have shown that this is thousands of times in excess of the amount of energy we consume per-year in the country. The trick is to get it out of the ground economically and efficiently and to do it in an environmentally sustainable manner. That's what a lot of the field efforts have focused on. _TechReview

If you drill far enough down into the Earth, you will find hot rock. Circulating a heat exchange fluid into the rock allows you to utilise the heat to drive a heat engine to generate electric power. Using both the heat and the electricity obtained from below ground, life on planet Earth could be maintained under large domes for millions of years, even without the sun. Add the energy you can get from nuclear fission and fusion, and human civilisation could go on even longer.

Since the sun is likely to go on for another billion years or longer, what we are talking about is two things: 1. geothermal energy as supplementary, baseload energy for parts of the world where nuclear power is not practical or safe, and 2. human settlements on molten-core planets which are too far away from a star for conventional star-powered photosynthetic life cycles and atmospheric heating.

Geothermal is expensive, and is a low-grade form of energy. But it is 24 hour a day baseload energy which can also be load-following power. Enhanced geothermal requires deep drilling and regular maintenance. And there is the fear of earthquakes:

Using EGS, producers drill deeply into hot rocks and pump surface water to them. The heat is transferred to the water and it is pumped back to the surface with geothermal energy that is used in a standard geothermal power plant. Much heralded until recently, EGS began to garner controversy when its deep fracturing of geologic structures seemed to be associated with increased seismic activity, first in Basel, Switzerland, and later in California.

..."The thing is, you've got to address it," Gawell said. "If you've got major slip faults in the area, you don't do a project there. You simply stay away. When somebody permits a geothermal project in Basel, Switzerland, the site of the biggest earthquake in European history, you have to wonder whether they did any screening or thinking" beforehand. _GreentechMedia

But think about it: Earthquakes come from faultlines where plates are pushing and sliding against each other. The best way to prevent a large earthquake is to trigger multiple small earthquakes to relieve the pressure that is building over time.

The hysteria over EGS-caused mini-quakes is misplaced. The danger comes from not relieving the pressure.

And so massive quantities of baseload energy goes untapped, because for now it is cheaper to use other forms of energy -- such as coal, gas, oil, hydro. How does geothermal compare to wind?

According to Tantoco, the company may spend as much as $3.5 million to produce a megawatt of geothermal power through its greenfield facilities, and about $2.5 million per megawatt for its wind power project. [EDC Philippines] _BusinessInquirer

But geothermal is 24 hour baseload and potentially load-following power. Wind power is intermittent, with a capacity factor of 0.3 or less -- and essentially unpredictable! Wind machines often break down within 5 to 10 years, whereas geothermal can last for several decades or longer.

No one is saying that geothermal is better than small modular nuclear reactors in terms of portability, versatility, efficiency, or affordability. But for demographic reasons, some parts of the world are simply not safe places to put nuclear plants -- even SMRs. If geothermal energy is available, it represents a better alternative, for those particular places.

Spallation Drilling Offers Hope for Deep Geothermal

Deep rock drilling is extremely expensive, but in order to take maximum advantage of enhanced geothermal energy, we have to drill many thousands of feet into the hot rock. The links and video below point toward a possible solution: spallation drilling.

Brian Westenhaus took a recent look at the growth in the number of geothermal projects across the US. And a recent Seeker Blog article on geothermal energy suggests that spallation drilling should provide an economic means for drilling at the necessary depths for high quality heat.  The graph below shows the projected economic benefit of spallation drilling vs. conventional deep rock drilling.

Hydrothermal spallation was invented and patented by cofounder Bob Potter and Jefferson Tester of MIT. The patent is owned by MIT and licensed exclusively to Potter Drilling.

An animation of how hydrothermal spallation works.

An animation of how hydrothermal spallation works.

Chad Augustine MIT PhD Thesis Chemical Engineering

Summary of Potter Geothermal project funded by US DOE

Description of hydrothermal spallation drilling at Energy Boom

2006 Technology Review interview with patent holder Jefferson Tester

Adapted from a post published at Al Fin, The Next Level

Geothermal Advantages Over Wind, Solar

The two largest renewable sources of energy supply for planet Earth are solar and geothermal. Solar energy is hampered by its diurnal cycle and vulnerability to bad weather. Geothermal is superior to solar at least temporarily.

The geothermal option has a distinct advantage over wind and solar power when it comes to pricing....Geothermal also has the advantage of being a dependable source of energy, and is not dependant on weather conditions or time of day.... a new technology called EGS, or enhanced geothermal systems, which will allow access to areas where underground heat is accessible but the water used for traditional geothermal production is not available, may revolutionize the field. If this technology - which is being researched by academics and private companies including Ormat - can become feasible, the world potential for production would jump phenomenally to some 200 GW, according to a recent MIT estimate. _JP

Actually, the world potential for geothermal is far higher than 200 GW. Everything depends upon the technology of materials, heat exchange, and energy transduction. All of those areas are in a state of rapid flux.

Hot Rocks Low Temperature Geothermal Update

Brian Westenhaus takes an interesting look at progress by low temperature geothermal company Raser.

Barely a year into the geothermal business the Raser idea is based on good working technology. They are using an off the shelf award winning heat pump from United Technologies set up to drive a generator instead of a motor driving the compressor as done successfully by Gwen Holdmann up in Alaska....Raser has reported some progress. But the avalanche of press releases that haven’t panned out to the liking of the stock-tracking people isn’t building a lot of confidence.

...Raser is saying that they have optimized the generators to run on source temperatures of between 200 to 300 degrees F. This is a range that works for much wider areas of geothermal resources than temperatures needed for full flash steam generation. Gwen Holdmann and UT have shown full function at 165 degrees.

...The project is in Beaver County Utah. On August 12 they took delivery of the first 50 generator units from UT and have announced they are all in place as of September 4th with the cooling towers and hook up to go. It’s expected that these 50 generators will output 10 megawatts continuous. That will be something, a sure start on growth, as reports have the capital cost approximating wind farm and solar thermal installations but with 24/7/365 output for a very different economic picture. Reports say that Raser has eight projects underway in Utah, New Mexico, Oregon and Nevada.

The design is for modular generators, so that one module can be maintained while others continue to operate. Modular building also reduces costs. Raser is estimating investment recovery in 12 to 18 months. _NewEnergyAndFuel

Very fast implementation, and very favourable investment recovery estimates. Are they just blowing smoke, or is this for real?

Bank of America subsidiary Merrill Lynch is backing Raser, and the proof of the pudding will happen quite soon. We will not be kept in suspense long.

Raser's stock price has been fluctuating wildly, which suggests that opportunity may be knocking for those with liquid investment capital.

Geothermal Energy Discovery in Australia

Geologists have discovered a massive underground basin of "hot rocks" that could provide clean energy to a quarter of Queensland, Premier Anna Bligh says.

A government-funded exploration program has uncovered the Millungera Basin, a 15,000 square kilometre area about 100 kilometres east of Cloncurry in Queensland's northwest. _The Age

Experts have estimated that Australia could draw nearly 7 per cent of its electricity from hot rock power stations by 2030 after Geoscience Australia's analysis revealed the country's geothermal energy source to be about 1.2 billion petajoules - far eclipsing our 140,000 PJ of total proven and probable gas reserves.Geologists discovered the new basin, which is believed to be up to 540 million years old, underneath the younger Carpentaria Basin. Further surveys will be conducted to find out the size, shape and depth of the basin in addition to drilling to assess the geothermal potential of the site. The Government will soon decide which blocks of land will be released for tender for geothermal and gas exploration. _NEN

Australia is better known for its abundant coal resources, becoming a main supplier to China's rapidly expanding coal power industry, and also beginning to supply the growing Persian Gulf coal market.

Thanks to Keven Rudd's new carbon inquisition, Australia may be unable to use its own coal in-country. Very much like the US Congress led by Boxer and Pelosi, placing onerous constraints on US energy use.

Advanced Geothermal Under Study

EGS are systems of engineered reservoirs created by drilling deep wells into hot rock, fracturing the rock, and circulating a fluid through the wells to extract heat. __GCC

The US Department of Energy is offering up to $90 million to advance the state of the art in enhanced geothermal energy production. By the year 2050, enhanced geothermal may generate 20% of the electricity produced by US utilities.

The DOE report found that there are three critical assumptions about EGS technology that require thorough evaluation and testing before the economic viability of EGS can be confirmed:

1. Demonstration of commercial-scale reservoir. This requires stimulation and maintenance of a large volume of rock (equivalent to several cubic kilometers) in order to minimize temperature decline in the reservoir. Actual stimulated volumes have not been reliably quantified in previous work.

2. Sustained reservoir production. The MIT study concludes that 200°C fluid flowing at 80 kg/sec (equivalent to about 5 MWe) is needed for economic viability. No EGS project to date has attained flow rates in excess of ~25 kg/sec.

3. Replication of EGS reservoir performance. EGS technology has not been proven to work at commercial scales over a range of sites with different geologic characteristics. __GCC

The actual available energy in the hot dry rock layers far exceeds all energy used by humans on Earth. It will require new technology to retrieve that energy, however. Geothermal is baseload energy--available 24 hours a day, every day. Until we have space-based solar, or until utility scale electrical storage is cheaper than dirt, that advantage puts geothermal far ahead of other renewables.

Let's see, 20% of US electricity from enhanced geothermal, 20% of US electricity from waste heat recovery--before you know it, you're talking about real power.

Enhanced Geothermal News

Enhanced geothermal power uses drilling technology to punch two or more holes down into the "hot dry rock" layer of the Earth's crust. Water is then pumped into one hole and steam is extracted from the other hole(s), to drive a turbine generator for electric power. Enhanced geothermal is being pursued in Israel by Ormat Technologies.

Executives at Google have been clear that so-called enhanced geothermal is on the list of technologies they see as cost effective, compared with fossil fuel energy.

The idea behind enhanced, or engineered, geothermal systems is to inject water underground to enhance the permeability of rock, allowing for the release and capture of more heat.

Ormat is working on an enhanced geothermal project organized by the U.S. Department of Energy, which says that these advanced techniques can dramatically increase geothermal potential--by 40 times. __Cnet_via_NextBigFuture

The US DOE believes enhanced geothermal to have the potential to generate thousands of times the energy and power used by humans over the entire planet.

Humans have access to three virtually unlimited sources of energy that can supply their energy needs thousands of times over into the indefinite future. Solar--which needs better storage. Geothermal--which needs technology development. Nuclear fusion--which needs technology development. Biomass could easily supply all of humanities energy needs given more development--but probably not thousands of times over.

We are living in and near an abundance of energy. If you want to play out adolescent fantasies of living in a post-apocalyptic world instead of working to solve problems, go to the peak oil sites. You will find your soul mates there.

Much more at Brian Wang's NextBigFuture

Oregon Geothermal Projects Heat Up

Enhanced geothermal energy involves drilling deeply into the Earth's crust to hot rocks, then injecting water in one hole and withdrawing steam from an adjacent hole--to drive a steam turbine powered electrical generator. The western US contains a large number of likely sites for both enhanced geothermal, and more conventional geothermal--which relies upon pre-existing pressurized hot water to steam geothermal processes.

The state Department of Geology and Mineral Industries this year issued three new permits for drilling geothermal wells, an early step in developing power plants that turn underground heat into electrical power. A fourth permit will probably be issued soon, said Bob Houston, a state geologist.

They are the first geothermal permits issued in Oregon in a decade or more, he said, and signal a new push for geothermal power driven by increasing demand for clean, renewable energy.

...At least three companies are planning geothermal power plants in Oregon, and one could be producing electricity in less than two years, officials said. The recent failure of Congress to extend tax breaks for renewable energy makes financing the plants more challenging but should not derail them entirely, officials said.

Interest so far is focused most closely on known hot spring areas in eastern Oregon:

The best-known site is Newberry Crater near Bend, where Connecticut-based Davenport Power just received permits to drill two exploratory wells. The company has signed a 20-year contract with California's Pacific Gas & Electric to sell 120 megawatts of power annually from the project, enough to light about 80,000 homes.

U.S. Geothermal of Boise recently received a permit to drill an exploratory well on private land at Neal Hot Springs, west of Vale near the Idaho border. If the first well verifies the hot-water reservoir the company expects, three more wells and a power plant estimated at 26 megawatts in size will follow, officials said.

Raser Technologies of Provo, Utah, plans construction of a 10-megawatt power plant in Klamath County, near the California border, in the next 18 months. The company also has leased 73,000 acres of land owned by International Paper in Oregon for potential geothermal development.

The Oregon Institute of Technology in Klamath Falls is proposing installation of a geothermal power plant that would make it the only college campus in the world completely powered by local renewable energy, according to John Lund, director of the Geo-Heat Center at OIT. ___Oregonian

In the short run, the more immediately profitable conventional geothermal processes will predominate. But as energy prices remain high on the world markets, the incentive to push forward to the "enhanced geothermal" or hot-rock technologies will become irresistible.

JTEC: Johnson Thermoelectric Energy Conversion

This heat engine, based on the "Ericsson cycle", has been discussed on multiple websites yesterday and today, including Brian Wang's.

It is based on the "Ericsson Cycle", and incorporates aspects of heat engines and fuel cells. It has no moving parts, it does not burn fuels or depend on chemical reactions (other than simple oxidation and reduction of H2 gas), and it is not at all obvious to me how it can be made to work efficiently. Anyway, here is the company's spiel:

The JTEC is an all solid-state engine that operates on the Ericsson cycle. Equivalent to Carnot, the Ericsson cycle offers the maximum theoretical efficiency available from an engine operating between two temperatures. The JTEC system utilizes the electro-chemical potential of hydrogen pressure applied across a proton conductive membrane (PCM). The membrane and a pair of electrodes form a Membrane Electrode Assembly (MEA) similar to those used in fuel cells. On the high-pressure side of the MEA, hydrogen gas is oxidized resulting in the creation of protons and electrons. The pressure differential forces protons through the membrane causing the electrodes to conduct electrons through an external load. On the low-pressure side, the protons are reduced with the electrons to reform hydrogen gas. This process can also operate in reverse. If current is passed through the MEA a low-pressure gas can be "pumped" to a higher pressure.

The JTEC uses two membrane electrode assembly (MEA) stacks. One stack is coupled to a high temperature heat source and the other to a low temperature heat sink. Hydrogen circulates within the engine between the two MEA stacks via a counter flow regenerative heat exchanger. The engine does not require oxygen or a continuous fuel supply, only heat. Like a gas turbine engine, the low temperature MEA stack is the compressor stage and the high temperature MEA is the power stage. The MEA stacks will be designed for sufficient heat transfer with the heat source and sink to allow near constant temperature expansion and compression processes. This feature coupled with the use of a regenerative counter flow heat exchanger will allow the engine to approximate the Ericsson cycle.

Source

You can find an animation of the device in action at the link above. It is a bit of a puzzler for me at this point.

Lonnie Johnson, the inventor, was formerly an engineer at NASA's JPL, before he made millions from inventing a glorified water gun. Some of his other inventions are quite intriguing, so check out his websites.

To be honest, I am more excited about the nano-antenna and the nano-spray silicon particle PV windows, than I am about the JTEC. But if the inventor gets a working prototype with better than 1 or 2 % efficiencies, I may start to perk up.

Heat conversion is one of the best ways to utilise solar energy, and it is the only way to utilise geothermal energy. Solar and geothermal are the two most abundant sources of energy on this planet, so we had best learn to use them every way we can.

Geothermal Energy--Enough for the Next 250,000 Years

There are 100 million exojoules (quads) of energy available from geothermal energy in the earth. The total human energy use per year is a mere 400 exojoules per year. At that rate, it would take 250,000 years for humans to use all the energy available from the earth's stored heat.

This Technology Review interview with MIT Chemical Engineer Jefferson Tester sheds a great deal of light on this vastly under-utilised energy technology:

Technology Review: How much geothermal energy could be harvested?

Jefferson Tester: The figure for the whole world is on the order of 100 million exojoules or quads [a quad is one quadrillion BTUs]. This is the part that would be useable. We now use worldwide just over 400 exojoules per year. So you do the math, and you know you've got a very big source of energy.

How much of that massive resource base could we usefully extract? Imagine that only a fraction of a percent comes out. It's still big. A tenth of a percent is 100,000 quads. You have access to a tremendous amount of stored energy. And assessment studies have shown that this is thousands of times in excess of the amount of energy we consume per-year in the country. The trick is to get it out of the ground economically and efficiently and to do it in an environmentally sustainable manner. That's what a lot of the field efforts have focused on.

TR: We do use some geothermal today, don't we?

JT: In some cases nature has provided a means for extracting stored thermal energy. We have many good examples. The Geysers field in California is the largest geothermal field in the world -- it's been in production for over 40 years and produces high-quality steam that can readily be converted into electric power, and it's one of the rarities nature-wise in terms of what we have worldwide. In the mineral vernacular they would be regarded as sort of high-grade gold mines.

....TR: How do you plan to harvest stored heat from more areas?

JT: What we're trying to do is emulate what nature has provided in these high-grade systems. When we go very deep, [rocks] are crystalline. They're very impermeable. They aren't heat exchangers like we really need. We'd like to create porosity and permeability. [The rock] actually is filled with small fractures, so what you're trying to do is find those weak zones and reopen them. We need to engineer good connectivity between an injection set of wells and a production set of wells, and sweep fluid, in this case, water, over that rock surface so that we extract the thermal energy and bring it up another well.

TR: What technology do you need to open up the rock and harvest the heat?

JT: All the technology that goes into drilling and completing oil and gas production systems, [such as] stimulation of wells, hydraulic fracturing, deep-well completion, and multiple horizontal laterals, could in principle be extended to deep heat mining. Hydraulic methods have been the ones that hold the most promise, where you go into the system and you pressurize the rock -- just water pressure. If you go higher than the confinement stress, you will reopen the small fractures. We're just talking about using a few thousand pounds per square inch pressure -- it's surprising how easy this is to do. This is a technique that's used almost every single day to stimulate oil and gas reservoirs.

....TR: You're working on new drilling technology. How does this fit in?

JT: We feel that as part of a long-term view of the possibility of universal heat mining, we should also be thinking about revolutionary methods for cutting through rock and completing wells. Most of the drilling that's done today is made by crushing and grinding our way using very, very hard materials to crush through and grind through minerals in the rock. And it's been very successful. It's evolved tremendously over the past century, and we can do it, certainly, routinely, to 10 kilometers. But it costs a lot. So we're looking for a fundamental way to change the technology that would change the cost-depth relationship, and allow us to drill deeper in a much more cost-effective manner. It would open up the accessibility tremendously.

TR: What are the advantages compared with other renewable sources of energy?

JT: Geothermal has a couple of distinct differences. One, it is very scalable in baseload. Our coal-fired plants produce electricity 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The nuclear power plants are the same way. Geothermal can meet that, without any need for auxiliary storage or a backup system. Solar would require some sort of storage if you wanted to run it when the sun's not out. And wind can't provide it without any backup at 100 percent reliability, because the typical availability factor of a wind system is about 30 percent or so, whereas the typical availability factor of a geothermal system is about 90 percent or better.

....TR: How fast do you think artificial geothermal systems can be developed?

JT: With sufficient financing and a well-characterized field, you can go into existing areas right now and build a plant, getting it operational within a few years. But to get universal heat mining is going to take an investment which won't be quite that quick. It might take 10 or 15 years of investment to get to the point where you have confidence that you can do this in virtually any site that you can go to. Once it gets in place, though, it can be replicated. I think it's very reproducible and expandable. That's the great hope at least.

Source.

Between solar power and geothermal power, you would think there would be no need to burn oil, coal, or gas. Unfortunately, it takes time to develop alternative technologies. But knowing they are available, and on a scale that humans will never exhaust, should give forward thinking persons something to work on. Working productively is a good alternative to wetting your pants over ever-present fears of doom.