Geothermal energy is a type of renewable energy extracted from the Earth’s core that is always available and that is because, for solar energy, the Sun does not always shine and for wind energy, the wind does not always blow, which means that they are not As practical as you’d expect. However, the core of the earth is always burning. Now, a team of engineers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) intends to drill the planet up to 20 kilometers with the aim of locating a source of clean and continuous energy.
What is the biggest obstacle?
That geothermal energy can only be found in volcanic areas or near the edges of tectonic plates. There are very few places where hot rocks suitable for geothermal energy extraction sit conveniently near the surface. The plan is to use new drilling technology to reach depths never seen before: 10 to 20 kilometers into the bowels of the Earth . With a gyrotron.
The most we have drilled so far has been 12.3 kilometers, the Kola Superdeep Borehole , the deepest hole that humanity has managed to make. It was a Russian project near the Norwegian border that started in 1970, with the aim of drilling through the crust to the mantle. They decided that it was economically unfeasible to continue.
The Quaise Energy company is the startup that aims to make it possible to obtain geothermal energy at any time and in any place (it has received funding of 63 million dollars to achieve it). If successful, it could forever revolutionize the way we produce renewable energy.
How would it work?
Using a regular drill is not an option , even if it is very large, as it will break or even melt at a certain depth, when the heat and pressure are already too strong. And creating a material that can withstand such conditions would be very expensive, so drilling has been kept strictly close to the surface. Instead, the system would operate by drilling down to bedrock and then firing high-power millimeter waves—with gyrotrons—into the ground, without the need for complex mechanical drilling that is limited by the aforementioned intense heat and pressure deep in the crust. land. These electromagnetic waves generated by gyrotrons, in the millimeter-wave part of the spectrum, are wavelengths shorter than microwaves, but longer than visible or infrared light.
The forgotten renewable energy
Thus, although it may seem like something out of a science fiction movie, the technology involves the use of high-frequency waves to heat the rock on its way to a temperature such that it melts or vaporizes . By connecting a megawatt-power gyrotron to the latest cutting tools, Quaise hopes to be able to cut his way through the hardest, hottest rock to depths of around 20 kilometers in a matter of months. At these depths, the heat from the surrounding rock reaches temperatures of around 500°C.
The company would then use this heat to “jump-start traditional power plants,” eliminating the need for fossil fuels. “This round of funding brings us closer to providing clean, renewable baseline energy,” Carlos Araque, CEO and co-founder of Quaise Energy, said in a statement.
If we could drill deep enough, we could put geothermal power stations anywhere we wanted.
When will it go into operation?
The goal is to have the first drilling platform in operation by 2024. The first wells would produce up to 100 megawatts of geothermal energy in 2026. A couple more years, in 2028, and fossil power plants reused in clean energy could already be quantified. coming from the depths of the Earth, all over the world.
“The path to terawatt-scale clean energy does not require building a global infrastructure. Quaise Energy is accelerating the clean energy transition by repowering the current energy industry’s fossil fuel infrastructure with clean geothermal steam .
Reference: Quaise.energy
