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Thanks so much for this video. God I hope we could use this technology already. Here in Scandinavia, we rely on windpower mostly, so a second source of carbon-neutral energy would be perfect.
Heck, with this, we could draw off billions of joules of heat energy, thereby lowering the 10km deep rock by many degrees, creating condensing forces in many megatons of solid rock. Heck, I want to live near these. So I can ride the waves of the newly created shearing forces! Yeah! 9.4 super earthquakes in the midwest! yes! We never get the fun disasters. Basically, "they don't have the instabilities in other places" so we have a clean canvas to create all new instabilities! (Or it will be someone else's problems 30 years from now.) Also think of it this way. The fault areas are cracked and unstable. Much like a measure of sand. The stable zones that are not so cracked are more like a solid piece of glass. If you irregularly heat sand vs glass, which one will destabilize in a worse way? (Answer: the glass, as it has yet to crack up and is strong enough to hold a lot of initial stresses). So stable ground will cause the biggest problems, but a long time from now. This sounds good. But it may take a slightly different form once complete. If they keep at it, it will probably get there. Seems silly not to use free energy under our feet. Getting at it is the biggest hurdle.
I like many aspects of this tech, geothermal replacing coal fired and reusing the existing infrastructure is a great plan. I hope this does come to commercial scale and get widely applied.
speaking of Coal, It will ignite underground coal deposits which can burn without air. Ground surveys will have to be precise and careful before such an approach is to be used.
@@KyBrancaccio coal and other fossil fuels would be in the first 3-5km of the borehole, and won’t be a problem as this section is drilled conventionally.
I remember reading an article about this guy only a few months ago when he published his results; it's amazing to see how quickly this has been picked up and how fast we're getting to industrial scale. Usually that kind of stuff takes ages. Also, using fusion stabilizing magnetron beams to drill holes to the centre of the planet is both mega sci-fi and reminiscent of the many technological developments that were made during the space race in service of taking a human crew to the moon and back, and how we're still using those technologies today for a wide variety of applications. These stories are always fascinating.
A magnetron is not a gyrotron. Both produce EM waves within a similar range of spectra, but they are different in terms of design and the upper limits of their output. Gyrotrons are far more effiicent for super high energy use cases like this.
Very cool! I am eager to see the results from larger scale tests of this tech. One of my biggest concerns is related to insulating the electronics of the gyrotron. We currently struggle with the issue of electronic borehole instruments failing at ~150° C. 500° C is *very* hot and it seems there might need to be a robust cooling system at a level of sophistication that is hard to imagine without further research. Great video Matt, Carlos, and Paul!
@@rubikmonat6589 What about signal degradation of the gyrotron? The approximate 25% gain lose per every connection. Since well drilling pipes are a new connection every 27-32 foot. For that amount of energy and depth either your using Andrew LDF5 at a min (They don't make a reel that long in Chicago for depths mentioned) or polarized tubes like the DEW line. And would still have issues with rock like glass splatter coating at the end. Unless using an ungodly PSI and amount of inert gas like argon thus raising cost. Three Mile Island only reached something like 135 feet below ground due to ground table water. When the pellets and rods decided to leave the pressure vessel.
@@sclabhailordofnoplot2430 That is why the wave guide is an entirely separate entity from the well pipes. The well pipes are just there to line the hole when conventional mechanical drilling is being used. Below that, the tool vitrifies the rock so the hole is basically lined with volcanic glass.
@@sclabhailordofnoplot2430 think of the drill string as segments of rigid waveguide not coax, much lower loss and near zero loss at joints. Yes ungodly amounts of inert gas, not just for clearing the end but pressure to keep the hole open, you would need so much pressure you will likely blow out the glass casing at the shallower depths (you aren't able to use the gravity pressure gradient from the height like you get with mud). I don't think it will work, just from the pressure physics. Then you don't get the string buoyancy from the mud either, so the tensile strength will be eye watering trying to hang all that off a rig.
@@rubikmonat6589 Thanks, So skipping investing. I feel old drilling methods, sandblasting, Water blasting, And brisance explosive carts would be more cost effective. Possibly a new Jack hammer style hydraulic drill head. Issues: The unsupported wave guide pipe (keeping straight in hole), Drill holes are never straight 100% Ridged wave guide can't work, (connections not discussed for signal gain loss Microwave, Laser, Electricity, and RF all have these issues), Heat issue, stronger drill rig for wave guide pipe (good point Rubik), amount of power needed at site, and removal of debris without splattering molten rock on the working end. High PSI means heavier pipe which compounds the line tension issue. Your going to have to keep to 30 foot sections to match the curve of the original drill pipe. These polarized wave guide high psi pipes are going to need stored to prevent oxidization when not in use. Dehumidified so you don't get a moisture block explosion. I'm out, not saying it can't be done. I just foresee someone calling a radar guy to fix the wave guide after its been dented, kinked, coverd in splatter, or broke off 2,000 feet down. Good luck fishing that back up. There going to have to use robotic/or psi driven external expanding open face ball bearings. on the pipe to keep it straighter and grip the sides of the shaft to lessen the pipe weight.
If this pans out, one could even imagine power generation eventually becoming far more localized, with each metro area having power plants, thus reducing the energy loss on long transmission lines. Lots of "ifs" to get there, no question, but this is exciting.
That would also have a big benefit in terms of reducing the reliance on interconnected complex power distribution systems. We've already seen a couple of massive blackouts where tens of millions lose power because a handful of things broke that, in combination, took down the entire grid for the region. Sure, at least some of the root causes of those would still have an impact (Coronal Mass Ejections causing an EMP that fries everything can knock out 20 local grids as easily as it can a single supergrid that covers everything from Quebec to Washington DC), but it does mean that the fallout from such surges wouldn't spread past the edge of the area effected by the CME or whatever itself)
@@yeetboi268 I think the earthquake would only affect the surface and shallow equipment. There are large deep underground tunnel systems being built in high risk areas to protect essential and high risk services.
You could drill horizontal once you reach a certain depth if the temperature gradient is high. Also a lot of the cost can be offset if gas pockets like helium, argon, xenon,etc are recovered. It could also be used to set up seismometers and detect the depth of the earthquake and triangulate the location. You could even use the heat for desalination plants from such wells.
I particularly like the idea that you could just drill in the parking lot of an existing power plant & convert it over to geothermal very easily, with zero emissions and a pre-built power infrastructure already connected to it.
I'm not a geologist. But what will happen in the moment that super heated water or gas is reached, will there be a blow out that engineering cannot cap? Will we have a hole spewing toxic gas into atmosphere? Will it destroy the drilling equipment?
@@0my Well, I'm not a geologist either. It's my understanding that the wellhead maintains pressurization before, during and after drilling. Once the drilling is completed, the fusion drill gets removed, and a pipe assembly circulating some heat-exchanging fluid gets installed into the hole. None of the drilling processes are paticularly exotic or experimental. Iceland's been doing this for years with no procedural crises. In fact, so has the US. As I understand it, the only difference in process is the type of "drillbit," if you will, and the only physical distinction is the depth of the hole. At this point, if they struck oil instead, they'd be disappointed. But it wouldn't cause a disaster.
@@erfquake1 Oil might actually be a bit of an issue when using a laser to super-heat rock but then again maybe it isn't, I don't know enough about the temperatures involved and the flash point of oil (or whatever else they may encounter). I presume they'll use some sort of sensing tool to get an idea before digging too far (some sort of sonar or radar system maybe).
@@erfquake1 There are currently 7 US states that already have grid level geothermal generation of electricity. The FORGE project in the state where I live is one of the US Department of Energy's pilot projects to help overcome hurdles to geothermal energy generation. The challenges are many and varied, not just the drilling method. But it is very true that drilling technology has absolutely been the biggest hurdle. One thing this video mentions is that the water resources at depths like the ones he is referring to tend to exist in a supercritical state. My brother has a PhD in Chemical Engineering and his thesis was based on supercritical fluid research, so I asked him about it. Turns out, even very small amounts of sulfur added to supercritical water is extremely corrosive and sulfur is definitely present in the water down there. So dealing with water at that depth is no walk in the park. All of the problems have solutions. And those solutions are probably still a lot easier than anything associated with controlled nuclear reactions of any kind - especially fusion. So breakthroughs like the one described in this video are great news! Just a few more engineering challenges to go and it becomes inevitable. This will be our reality - and because of this breakthrough, it will be sooner not later.
I LOVE your content! When I found you, I didn't care so much about green energy/renewables however as an engineer I was curious about the statistics as well as tech and design concepts behind a lot of your topics. Now that I've been watching you for a bit, I'm looking into geo-thermal cooling for my house and actually excited to buy my next house so I can go solar as well. Thank you for bringing such GREAT topics to this platform and for covering them in such an informative way.
Please keep us up to date on this. This is one of the most practical ways it seems to end some of the fossil fuel dependence. Since the drill rigs are all over the place and the lack of need for casing. Thanks, I enjoy all your research and presentations.
I was just looking at the web site for Iceland's geothermal power production. Pretty amazing. Many power plants and 70% of the electricity generated goes to making aluminum. The energy goes to things we don't think of like longer showers, heating the streets to keep ice off. Some drilling has been required but the sources are so shallow not a lot of drilling has been required.
Imagine that- having such abundance we could be heating streets, no doubt that worlds coming, although from a current prospective it seems impossible .
Wairakei in NZ uses geothermal energy from closer to the surface as well as the Waikato River for a source of cooling water . Relatively shallow Geothermal energy is a good resource but will require careful management …
@@lubricustheslippery5028 We dont have enogh of hydropower as we have to use hundreds of tons of disel to run our industry in my part of Iceland, is that better?
@@donTeo136 they constantly trickle warm water into ponds and lakes to make them more hospitable to the critters too. This type of reliable constant high output energy enables so many uses.
This is the most promising renewable energy source i ever seen. It might have its own limitations or say side effects but compare to other renewable alternatives this is most reliable and very straight forward. Only efforts will goes into making the hole deep enough and prevent it from being collapsed. Apart from that nothing challenging as such.
As long as it doesn't increase earthquakes like fracking or end up venting toxic gases into nearby communities. Companies in the energy sector aren't exactly known for their safety standards. They prefer to let stuff break and pay small fines instead of maintaining equipment.
Agreed. It’s extremely promising and will be revolutionary in the areas that meet the niche requirements. Unfortunately that won’t be all locations, but luckily we have other clean solutions for those locations.
@@michaelandrews4783 that’s a ridiculous statement, if it were easy there would be a huge number of them out there already, as some companies would have gone for it for being able to undercut all the competition and make huge amounts of money.
I'm skeptical of how clearing the borehole will work over those distances and how the borehole will hold up with it relying solely on the result of melting the surrounding rock layers. They must have thought of these factors already, but that's a lot of pressure difference to rely on one mechanism for lifting debris, and the classic problem of drilling is going through transitions between layers of different types of rock. Not all types of rock will form the same sort of "glass" when melted, so transition boundaries are something that would be worrying to me, particularly when you repressurize the hole with acidic water. Even though I'm skeptical, I'm really hopeful this works. If it delivers on its promise and the boreholes prove to be sufficiently durable, this could be amazing.
the same thought as well. I don't think the glass surface will stand hundreds bars of pressure. But I suppose to put some tubing should be easier than constantly change drilling head which can stuck.
I had the same concern for turning Martian soil into glass. Some kind of targeted float distillation may be implemented with remote sensing of suspect impurities.
I am thinking the same. I was also wondering if they considered the impact of earthquakes on the stability of the "glass". I can see things going wrong there easily
Hopefully, this works as it does in theory, and their testing so far works when actually getting down to the required depth. This would be a great renewable source that works 24/7 with no pollution.
It's these types of videos that remind me the world really isn't as bad as it seems. We might be having hotter summers every year, but we're creating technology now that will benefit us immensely over the next 100+ years.
I took a course in geothermal energy in college and I really wanted to learn more towards it. But was disappointed as there was absolutely no geothermal energy production in India. The tectonically active areas in India is a convergence between two crustal plates and so the crustal thickness along those areas are extremely high as rocks pile up. That meant way too much drilling is needed to get to superheated water there. If this technology works and is adopted by India, it would be a game changer. That would mean there wouldn't be the need for those gigantic dams in Himalayas that are now under serious threat from mudslides and flashfloods from cloudbursts that are happening more frequently because of climate change. But I'm curious as to how the absence of seismic probe in conventional drilling could impact the process. It's kind of like driving blind. Though this might require using a separate probe after drilling to collect geological data, it will still help us research and understand a whole lot more about deeper earth. Then again, the lack of physical samples of rocks could still be a severe limitation.
@@cadelaide They do, but when the need for energy production is reduced the dams won't be so big. Bigger dams can also cause reservoir induced earth quakes
Could not agree more! it could be a game changer, but in geothermal or OnG drilling and exploration, geological data even just a drill cutting is crucial. We need samples of the formation to figure out what is happening inside the reservoir, there are a bunch of reservoir engineering works to be done that needs physical data of the subsurface formation. Luckily here in Indonesia we have an abundance geothermal energy potential, we dont have any problem with the thickness, its the economical aspects is the main limitation for us
This is an exciting development, it will be interesting to see how it makes its way into the field! I've seen research in the past looking into low(er)-temperature geothermal systems that use heat engine cycles that don't rely on steam. While not as efficient on a per-unit basis, they could be deployed far more universally. I wonder how those designs and these could mesh.
Interestingly, you don't even need high temperatures to run a steam engine or turbine, because they run into the vacuum of a condenser. So, you can boil of water at ambient temperature, as long as you have some colder reservoir to condense it and remove (dissolved) air from the system. Effiency is low at these small heat diffentials, of course. I also think "organic rankine"- cycles are better suited than water at these low temperature gradients.
Concerning meshing, at the temperatures implied in the vid, we don't really need to look for altertatives to water/ steam. Im curious, though, wether we could increase efficency in standard power cycles with another medium. I have read mercury would work really well, not sure if that is true or even relevant these days :D Helium was used in research reactors (thtr), and co2 in early british nuclear power plants (magnox), but only to carry heat from the fuel rods to the steam generator. Not sure wich medium promises most efficiency... il try to find a video on that :)
Nothing quite says environmentally friendly like poisonous heavy metals. I think the Mercury should be passed over. Perhaps it'd be possible to site other plants nearby. I recall hearing of a steam plant powered with rice bran. Wind and solar would be typical and maybe nearby hydropower as well.
Your welcome for the idea. I am glad you contacted them and figured more out on the feasibility side. Only time will tell how successful their project will be.
Thanks, Matt; one thing though - I was in the power system industry before I retired. We, that is, Los Angeles, had some geothermal resources. What we found was that drilling is one thing - using that heat was another: The water coming out of the ground was very caustic, resulting in high maintenance costs. On the other hand, any non-coal/gas resource is welcome. We (LA) also ran significant wind and solar, which has had a hard learning curve. Renewables, so far, have required expensive backup replacement energy (quick-start gas turbines), to fill in for the variability of wind and solar. (On a minute by minute basis renewables could swing hundreds of megawatts if the “farms” are large enough, which they are when these resources are scaled to utility levels .)
I listened to QUAISE Carlos on the Insiders Guide to Energy podcast. I hope this works out. It could be a big clean large scale portion of the solution to our worlds clean energy transition. Thanks for bringing this forward Matt Ferrel.
Thanks Matt, Excellent presentation (with puns)! Also learned some about the gyrotron! So many promising things about this tech. The speakers were very well spoken and didn't spew Sales! Retrofitting current plants and the ability to put these in Non Unstable areas is the most appealing. The other big thing to me is not having to use Nasty slurry's with normal drilling techniques other than through the sedimentary layers. Probably the biggest benefit to me is recycling the steam on both sides of the plant, thereby not destabilizing the well and only having filters to clean/replace on the top end. Can't wait to see how their proto build goes!!
this is really, really cool. If they work out the technical problems this could be the holy grail of renewables. I mean it fixes the largest issue with them - the unpredictability of when it shines and/or blows. Huge thing. Hope they'll make it work someday
Assuming it works as intended, I wonder how differences in minerals might affect the integrity of the glass casing. I hope the project goes well. We need all the baseload power we can get.
The term glass used here doesn't need scare quotes. Glasses are just amorphous, non-crystalline solids, often formed from heated rock cooling rapidly. They don't need to be silicates and some of the strongest glass is formed from doped silicates or non-silicate material. The only reason most human-made glass is silica-based is that silicon is readily available on Earth's surface in sand and silt.
@@lozoft9 The quotes were meant to highlight the non-uniformity of the material in various strata causing potential strength differences down the column of the casing wall. I didn't mean to suggest that it wasn't glass at all. Fair enough. Quotes removed for clarity.
I just don't understand how this glass is supposed to solve all the problems. I would've thought you couldn't prevent a tube collapse unless you filled it with something denser than they outside pushing in. Or even compressed, filling the tube with something that pushes out rather than a mud for example idk
Excellent vid, and I'm a fan of this technology. The beauty of it is that it can allow us to take advantage of the already built infrastructure of coal/gas plants to repurpose them for green geothermal energy. Not to mention it could be used for millions of years and has none of the negatives that nuclear energy does...just fantastic, I don't know why more people aren't jumping on this technology. Plus you can set up some plants inside cities to provide cheap district heating/hot water as well as power.
This reminds me of the drilling system in the hilariously bad movie: "The Core", only it's orders of magnitude more realistic. Having your heat-ray not be blocked by the vaporized material is another really important aspect of this, since that's actually one of the big technical hurdles in creating Giant Death lasers.
Yeah, immediately thought of laser cutters having issues with offgassing/material diffusing the laser. Seems like there should be some way around it though.
I actually enjoyed that movie. Yea, it's pretty terrible in how it represents science but I found it entertaining despite this. I think I'll watch it again tonight.
@@xniyana9956 it's been a long time since the last time I watched it. But if memory serves correctly, yes the science was terrible but it was consistent in its own logic
@@GameCyborgCh I literally just finished re-watching it, like not even a minute now as of this comment and yes, it is very consistent and also quite frankly, way better than 90% of the woke rubbish being put out today. The bad science doesn't one bit make this movie unenjoyable.
As a big Subnautica fan, Im a believer in geothermal. In that game (SPOILERS), long-gone Aliens left behind massive geothermal plants that powered all their needs. It’s not just a smart use of the infrastructure and energy we already have available around the ground- it’s just downright awe-inspiring. I believe this will be our main source of energy before we ever hit anything like massive solar panel arrays around the sun
Space borne solar has its own benefits for other applications though. Namely the obvious, power for large scale space based industry like mining asteroids.
Promising! I would love to look back on this energy crisis and think "never woulda guessed geothermal was the answer". Best of luck to the minds behind this and thanks for the video Matt.
There is no energy crisis. We have 65 trillion tons of uranium and 195 trillion tons of thorium in the earth's crust. Energy "scarcity" is caused by people's hesitancy to embrace nuclear energy.
Cheap clean energy has been promised my entire life. I keep hoping that one day our species will put our short -sighted ways behind us and throw our intellect into making sure we have a planet healthy enough to live on. Each year I lose a little hope though. I love seeing this new tech, I just hope that we can get it working fast enough.
Well explained, and I like that you didn't cover it in fluff, but even talk of drawbacks or obstacles. I contacted someone from DOE years ago to posit an idea of storing waste heat, from some solar projects, underground to build a kind of artificial and lower temp geothermal source and use either motors that operated on temperature differential (like stirling), or low pressure steam generators to augment the electricity from the solar project. The answer was short, and essentially "we have been looking into geothermal, and it has some obstacles'.
I am thinking that geo thermal boreing induced earthquakes could be a good thing. Inducing an earthquake prior to high buildup of techtonic stresses in theory would induce a lot of non critcal small earthquakes instead of a few catastrophic ones. After an area experiences a big quake, it might be a good area to start a tectonic stress relief project.
It sounds good in theory, but in practice it probably wouldn't work that way. Even a 10km deep borehole still only grazes the lithosphere. That would limit this only to shallow crustal earthquakes. These are rarely the "big ones", those are almost exclusively the domain of tectonic plate interactions, too deep and too large in scale to be affected by drilling. Additionally, you'd have to be able to detect the stress in the upper crust faultlines, calculate its source and vectors, and calculate a model for such release. Then you'd have to drill on the designated spot.
@@TarisSinclair I believe the potential success of geo thermal anywhere will morph to be refered to as geothermal everywhere. The power is for use by the customer so economics should dictate construction of facilities near population centers. That removes the problem of power plant location if they are everywhere. So that may be a good thing if a fracking break up of the earth crust absorbs seismic activity. Because EGS did induce an earthquake in South Korea and an earthquake is the relief of internal stresses within the earth I have to believe (guess really.) that EGS areas will likely have more earthquakes at lower amplitudes of activity. This is apparently a phenomena on the San Andreas fault around Hollister California. (A lot of activity but usually at lower amplitudes) I did not know that the deep big quakes originate below geo thermal well depths. I used to work at a powerplant. We circulated deionized water in a closed loop system for a heat recovery steam generator using gas turbine engine exhaust heat. That was really to protect the heat exchanger but I think there would be a significant maintenance advantage in closed loop systems as opposed to circulating water through fractured rock. I would bet closed loop systems would have little effect on seismic activity.
I don’t get the comparison between the cost of electricity to drill the hole vs. the total cost of drilling a hole using traditional methods. It would make much more sense to compare total costs on both sides.
Yeah seems a little unbalanced when comparing costs, but if they don't have to constantly replace drillbits and can just drill at a consistent rate that would save a massive amount on material and labor costs.
@@ingram2617 that’s assuming there are no replacement electrical drill heads and of course the power needed for the system. That might be inverted from using to making once everything is running though
Matt, I'm just an observer, but this week I informed the provincial Govt. here of using the Iceland example for using Geothermal to power our province in Canada, we grow every wheat above ground,mine uranium, & the province from day 1 was A Potassium Ocean, so we extract the Potash& send it all around the globe to farmers.
It's so funny that fusion may not come to market in our grandchildren's lifetime but the gyrotrons used to operate fusion reactions might solve our energy needs before the end of the century.
Geothermal like this is interesting, because it isn't even just always on, it will behave like storage. You are limited by the rate heat can diffuse into your borehole, so you can get extra power out of it for a few weeks by pumping more water down if you then reduce the power draw later to wait for it to warm up again. So it is complementary to conventional renewables.
I completely agree. It would make sense to cycle geothermal down during high solar and wind power times and cycle up when they are low. Additionally, homes can be heated through a pipe grid. Not uncommon in many cities e.g. in Europe but they still run on natural gas mainly.
Okay so it’s costs 4x a solar farm that produces the same power output, but what is the square footage required for the solar farm vs geothermal? And I like the benefit of hooking straight into decommissioned power plants to reuse infrastructure rather than build new infrastructure. I would think that would be the best for the environment and land usage.
With 241 coal power plants in the United States… there is not much opportunity for new energy production. The electrical lines already being run is the most significant benefit to switching to new base power technology. This small number of geothermal plants, in a land mass area, makes me feel very good, to be quite honest. Drilling millions of bore holes to transfer thermal energy to the biosphere would create tremendous anthropomorphic global warming, with no opportunity to recycle the heat, that we get with carbon based carriers and 100% recyclability. Drilling millions of bore holes into the earth, to transfer the heat, would slowly cool the earth, slow the movement of molten iron, decrease the magnetic field protecting the atmosphere, allow the solar wind to blow more atmosphere from the globe, resulting in evaporation & blowing away of water, and finally resulting in our blue planet turning into a dead rock & no life existing. These are heavy prices to pay for A/C to stay cool for a little while.
how would something like this handle an aquifer? Or are those typically only in the sedimentary rock layer that would be done with conventional drilling before inserting the heat ray?
Gotta love "happy path" research and idea sales. Even the cost comparison isn't good, comparing just the electricity cost of the proposed method vs. the entire cost of drilling conventionally to the same depth. Lost me right there.
@@CmputrAce because telling the world all the ways it could go wrong would bring in all the investors. I mean is there a CEO of any company that is going to detail all of the ways their new product could fail? It's an idea, and a pretty great one at that, if they are right about it they could transform the energy paradigm. While they are not talking about all the risks I'd be willing to bet they have a board full of all the ways this will go wrong, contingencies for those risks, and new plans to overcome.
Great Content always! Please dont Stop! I have been craving and searching for a channel that talks about exactly the content you share. ABSOLUTLEY LOVE YUR CHANNEL! THANKYOU SO MUCH.
I recently did a presentation on the geothermal topic for Uni looking at types of power production. One of the MAIN aspects besides location dependence was the initial cost of digging down. Talking with a Geology professor it can be usually upwards of 1 mill per km for a bore hole and Geothermal needs to be AT LEAST 5 km deep and usually 3 bores so the costs can get large very quickly.
I really respect how you say “Full Transparency:” I do the same thing, although I say “Full Disclosure:” I respect you very much. I went to school for renewable resources, as well as photo and solar thermal panels (or cells that make up panels).
2:30 "After extracting it and further heating it up to about 400F". What system is used to further heat the geothermal water and how much energy is used to accomplish this required additional heating?
Hearing about this tech being developed (or atleast being reapplied), its extremely reassuring to know that there is a possibility for renewable energy to become the norm in the foreseeable future. This can probably even help to speed up the development of fusion energy (not sure how tbh, might have something to do with the consumption of energy to fabricate and develope technologies atpleast in my mind)
Don't stop with this information flow, ever. Even if it means you have upset those Hydra chaps that would rather burn the world than change course to a truly intelligent future. Thank you for your efforts Sir
I can’t put into words how cool this is! Thanks for bringing this technology to our attention! I still think molten salt reactors are underutilized however. You’re right, it’s good to pursue a wide range of clean options, I just don’t think that molten salt is getting the funding that it deserves. It’s super safe and the radioactive waste produced is only Radioactive for 500 years. The technology is already proven. But enough on that, I think this new geothermal technology is extremely deserving of funding.
Depends on where they plan to drill. Could be connected to the existing power grid, or a diesel generator on a trailer. Since drilling is just the first step in creating the geothermal power plant they'll be building a lot of infrastructure there as well.
@@robertelliott6188 Yep, it's mentionned at 12:51 for reference. And if you do the math, even if you assume a high electricity cost like 20c/kWh like in California, it's still only cost about 480k. Also 1MW is not that much energy, about the equivalent of 100 amercan homes. Quite a few industries need >1MW for their operations, it can be provided with pretty standard infrastructure.
i love it how sponsored videos these days have "most replayed" just after the sponsor message. this doesn't say anything about your content Matt, you make great videos.
This is the way to go! Turn all those steam driven coal/gas burning power stations into nice friendly geothermal powered stations and you get maximal use from your initial investment, then after the setup costs have disbursed, free electricity apart from the maintenance costs!! So I hope they get round to sorting out all the wrinkles soon. Great series of informative and interesting videos. Keep up the good work!
I love your extensive caption list. I love discussing tech stuff with my father but he doesn't speak English so having arabic captions became the bridge for us to watch your videos together. Thank you!
It’s only (potentially) cheaper when you’re drilling through dense igneous rock, but oil is only found in sedimentary rock (like coal, it’s from dead plants)…not sure how common it is to have sedimentary rock with oil in it under a thick enough layer of volcanic rock that this technology would be superior to conventional drilling…this is cheaper when you go super deep, past the sedimentary layers.
Theoretically, this sounds good. It does need testing, one item that needs to be ruled out … would reduce stabilizing stress due to depth yielding unwanted results.
What? Why are you asking a question like that? Email the man in the know in the video for those answers. Also if you are so into the science of this geology why are you not working for a big company that is dealing in this science? Me personally wouldn’t ask that question because if I did I certainly wouldn’t be sitting around asking such questions, I would be in the thick of it and trying to get a job as I would feel competent as you do and applying to work one of these experimental digs. Or are you just winging it as if you are in the know?
@@Vile_Entity_3545 Are you upset at something in your life? Did you lose all your money in Bitcoin? Why do you seem so upset about a simple question? Do you need a hug? Maybe you're upset because you were turned down for that promotion. If that's the case, I would think it has something to do with your interpersonal skills. Anyway, try to cheer up. Who knows, maybe you'll come up with a really harmful thing to say to me and then you can feel better about your life. Looking forward to hearing back. Have a great day.
@@michaelsallee7534 You sound like an egg farmer yourself there. How many chickens you got? Or is it duck? Maybe quail? Aaaaany who... how's your bitcoin doing? Don't worry mate, it'll rebound.
in the graphic it looks like both the injection well and extraction well are going to the same general depth, presumably reaching the same rising hot geothermal waters. there is no "loop" depicted to suggest a path where the intake is made to turn around and come back up the extract. so how does the injection well prevent that same heat and geothermal waters from rising up itself? even if cool water is being pumped down it, what is preventing the resulting steam from building up pressure and trying to come back up the same intake?
It seems to me that dealing with the rock vapor is a major issue. To start with, if it's condensing out on the walls to form the casing, what stops it also condensing out on the wave guide? Then there's the question about flushing it all out to the surface. That column of rock dust loaded argon is going to be pretty heavy so the argon pressure will have to be very high which will have to be contained inside the wave guide system. Maybe, but I'd like to see some more details.
It always bothers me how the costs per kw of wind and solar energy don’t include all of the batteries, peaker plants and excess capacity needed to actually run these systems consistently. It seems like a clever lie that these industries use. I’m excited for Geothermal energy as it can be consistent and reliable without much added infrastructure
@CrustedCheese (love the name btw!), Valid point. I believe humanity will extinguish itself well before that time. Maybe this will let us keep the lights on while we do it. ;)
How deep have they been able to drill with this system? I spent 45 years in Alberta drilling wells as deep as 2,800 meters Your glassy rock is probably also VERY brittle As an experienced Geoscience professional, I hope you are right, but I hope you have a way to circulate the material to the surface. This is more complex than you can imagine. Failures in procedures can kill people, ask me how I know. 😔
It says at 11:35 that they've drilled three feet. Alberta would be an ideal place to do a pilot of this idea: lots of drilling expertise, lots of existing unused boreholes, thoroughly mapped geology, etc., etc. But like you I'll retain some healthy skepticism about this until they demonstrate "drilling" into the Precambrian basement.
Yes. I'm not experienced in this field, but I can do basic mass balance equations. The work that it takes to lift the vaporized rock is mass * g * height. If their plan is to use flushing gas, they'll either need insanely high differential pressures to achieve high specific thrust (like high pressure gas on input side aided by massive vacuum on output side) OR mechanical removal like auger conveyance which is probably not practical at these depths. Needless to say, the challenges seem big.
The glass lining of the hole. also got this layman's attention. I'd imagine if the drill makes any contact to those glass walls, it might break. I'd be very interested in a proof of concept to let's say 1km of depth!
@@JonMartinYXD I feel like the best way to circulate out 'cuttings' would be to pump water down string, and out port it at various depths, and use similar devices to the gyrotron to vaporise the water as it passes from string to annular to make sort of hot gas boosting stations up the hole, that should at least keep the vapourised rock media piping up to surface without slowing down or cooling down and precipitating minerals in the annular. But redunculously complicated.
@@eaaeeeea it would be mote like rock than actual glass. but it wouldn't have any tensile strength, so bore wall in push would pretty easily create problematic shearing.
With a single hole down how do you over come vapor lock? Water goes down heats up comes back up as steam? Do you wait for it to clear before sending down more water? A loop would seem to be more efficient how would you accomplish it?
I've always wondered, why Yellowstone isn't used as a GIANT thermal powerplant, While eventually learning and helping to release its potential excess pressure.
@@Neon-ws8er pretty is no good when there is nobody around to see it. Are you one of these types that would rather humans were not on the planet? If so then why are you here adding to the problem? I would rather have all of America’s power produced by the pretty park and life survives than life gone. Anyway this tech is going to solve that, but if we had to use Yellowstone I would be there to counter protest you into submission if it meant doing so to save the planet.
@@addohm For obvious reasons. If you are trying to save the planet, popping a factory in one of the most biodiverse areas in the world isn't exactly the way to go.
very interesting, and I always love it when we develop some super crazy lab hardware for some very esoteric reason, but once we have it, find a bunch of other neat things to do with it once it becomes cheap and easy. 2 things from this family of tech are magnetrons (super secret through WW2, but now used to casually reheat your lunch in a $100 microwave) and lasers (which were a pure science invention, no practical intent, but serve humanity in the highest level, the best cat toy ever. fibreoptics are overrated). I particularly like with this that its main consumable is electricity, and its main resulting product is electricity. In my part of the world, about 50% of our power comes from ~6 coal power stations within about 30km of each other, but wire all that power a good 300km to where 80% of the populations power is used. there is alot of infrastructure built over 200 years to support that. the town has little other industry other than coal. would be nice if we could use surplus power (we are rolling out wind and solar elsewhere, but will keep the coal plants alive because we need the base load) to drill bores to convert at least part of the infrastructure, gradually, over to something like this. looks like a triple win to me.
The 2 miles deep gold mines in South Africa have a problem called rock bursts where the mine tunnels suddenly slam shut compressing the air so it becomes white hot and comes out at supersonic speeds and buildings two miles up on the surface are thrown up in the air by the shock wave. The walls of the tunnels slowly creep inward because the rock is under about 10,000 pounds of pressure and it is hot. The pressure is about one psi per foot of depth and the rock flows more readily as it gets hotter with increasing debth.
I invested in geothermal exploration in the Cooper Basin in Australia some 14 years ago. The bore was 4500m deep and the proof of concept was established until embrittlement of the steel bore lining caused failure. I lost my money but I still see geothermal power as the nearest thing to a perpetual motion machine we will find. If those Cooper Basin bores had been drilled by this method the metalurgical issues would not have occurred and we might now be enjoying the fruits of clean baseload energy, and I would be enjoying the fruits of my investment. I was just too soon with it.
I've always had geothermal energy on my mind as a renewable source of energy. Back then, I thought going down 200m into the ground would have been enough. I was so wrong by a magnitude. But this new drilling method sounds promising. Can't wait to see their POC project. Did they get the idea from "Dr Braz"?
2 orders of magnitude, in fact, 20,000m! 200m is a good depth for ground source heat pumps though, but then you at the only getting slightly warm water and have to use electricity to extract useful heat from it. As opposed to geothermal where the heat is so concentrated too can get electricity out. I don't like when Matt says geothermal for ground source because they are such different things that it can lead to some confusion to use the same name.
I remember the movie but forgot the character’s name. These guys are a little older than me, perhaps the book that inspired the movie may have had its influences. It might be better to race toward being the highest producing open source product than to get bogged down in too much intellectual property.
The problems that I see with this drilling technique are purely related to maintenance and upkeep costs. Glass may have a strong factor against compression, but it is horrible against sheering. A single minor quake and *crack* goes your mining tube. Following that, what if your fluid line needs replacing, either through normal wear and tear or damage like said minor quake? This is promising, but all this is is a new way to drill. There are still a LOT of functional problems geothermal will need to combat.
The glass would be a harden for of glass. Think like gorilla glass for your phone screen except for multiple times stronger b/c of the different types of resin used for the creation of the glass.
Wouldn’t that affect any borehole even a conventional one? Geothermal is already in use so this must have been rectified or maybe they can just case the borehole with traditional methods?
Maybe coat the inside of the tube with a flexible material so cracks wont cause leakage? Keeping the tube somewhat intact would allow for repairs. Or just bore another hole, if the method costs 10 times less, you can do it ten times for the same cost.
Is it glass or cooled down magma? I think that the success to one project is proper research and risk assesment. Sure you could pick one drilling spot between tectonic plates, but why :)
Rocket drills have been a known technology for decades and haven't taken off anywhere, so I'm not convinced that this will get picked up either. Still, interesting idea.
"Rocket drills have been a known technology for decades and haven't taken off anywhere," They are not supposed to take off, if they were they would just be called rockets. ;-)
I would’ve preferred to see the electricity requirements measured in units other than dollars since the cost of electricity is variable. Joules or kilowatt hours perhaps.
Thanks Matt. One potential future topic: I would be interested to learn about geothermal electricity generation off-grid for a small remote community. Even if the costs do not seem all that feasible at the moment, it would be interesting to see where the available technology is currently. Maybe, pretend you have 500+ acres and truly want to be off-grid. I really appreciate learning about your new home project.
I would ask a number of questions. 1) How far has the drill done so far, what depth? 2) How could you work out the cost before you have some idea of the cost per depth? So many of these new ideas are turning out to be totally impossible. Too good to be true.
Yep, some potential downsides, just like our current portfolio of energy sources. The more experimentation, the more answers are generated and the more possible refinements or obstacles are encountered. Such is science. Or, we can stick with 1950s tech. Our choice. I recall being shocked that when petroleum was in its infancy, an unstable and highly dangerous byproduct of making kerosene was a real problem. The industry wasn't sure what to do with it, and it was often dumped in rivers and ground. It was too hazardous to handle. Should of quit then, right? That substance was gasoline.
@@fredd4526 Nice story but I very much doubt that it's true. All products derived from coal and oil have rapidly been put to one use or another. There are sources online which claim that gasoline was often "discarded" before the invention of the automobile, but it's more likely to have been the subject of a lot of research and used for various purposes in the intervening decades - just not by the companies set up to produce kerosene.
Very curious to see if the drilling truly can be implemented anywhere and everywhere. Being able to plug a geothermal steam source into existing turbine systems currently running off coal is huge: by retrofitting, you get to focus all resources on the primary source of energy as opposed to reinventing the wheel for power generation. Same principle with using hydrogen instead of natural gas: all existing gas transport infrastructure can be adapted/converted, as opposed to being torn down wholesale for something brand new. The more cynical part of me can't help seeing that implementing these conversions would unlock a power source far less inconsistent than the more mainstream renewables - and therefore less at the mercy of high-capacity batteries. Just like how efficient wireless power transmission - should anyone ever invent it - would suddenly make every copper mine in the world far less in-demand.
Sadly, I can't put a geothermal plant in my car., so the battery market is safe. now, WHICH battery market, that is the question. With nearly unlimited power, and a new source for platinum, H2 might actually win out. Otherwise, some form of catalytic battery will be needed.
The existing natural gas infrastructure is leaky enough, and hydrogen is even harder to contain. There is a 0% chance we could reuse the natural gas transport pipes for hydrogen transportation.
Wireless power is invented. Radio has been around for along time. A lot of energy is lost in transmission. There is no practical way to regain what is lost. Solar is also just that waves from the sun. Distance matters, the electron flow needs to be controlled. That is why your wireless phone charger is millimeters from its Transmitter to receiver. To better understand these things i recommend you look into Amateur radio ARRL and a HAM license. Most transmission lines and Home power lines/cords are aluminum, by the way for cost and lack of copper. Aluminum vibrates a lot under load.
My fear is, if this tech works, the oil and gas industry will just use it to get cheaper access to fossil fuels, then we'll be right back where we started.
They will DEFINITELY do that, but if you can just keep digging and hit geothermal energy viability, they might not be able to compete with that. Fingers crossed.
They might, but probably will not, because their strategy so far was to drop oil and nat gas prices significantly in the 2010s to bankrupt little companies. Then once the larger companies felt like they had a foothold to raise prices significantly. The Ukraine War does influence crude and nat gas prices, but part of it is used as an excuse to raise prices. This tech, like fracking, may help the little guy get a foothold again, which could cause a crash in oil prices again, which is a possible future, or the larger companies may maintain control, do everything they can to keep prices higher, and avoid this technology. It will be interesting to see what will happen.
I definitely see that concern, but I’m not too worried about that. If Quaise succeeds at their goals, geothermal base load power plants will be one of the cheapest and consistent ways to generate power. Corporations will follow the easy money (if Quaise succeeds). Combine that with many countries policies to phase out carbon emissions and you may have a winning formula.
@@UndecidedMF So how much energy can be "extracted" from one of these holes over extended periods of time? So without depleting the heat reserviour? There is only so much heatflux possible, about 0.1 MW/km² according to wiki (Geothermal energy). So how many holes to drill to extract this power, to cover a whole km²? Does that still make sense if the location is not right?
I haven't heard anyone from Quasie talk about hove they are going to connect the down and up bore holes. The need for an ultra straight waveguide eliminates directional drilling, and I doubt you can frack at those pressures.
Question on drilling Matt. Nearer the surface the temperatures are a lot cooler. As the superheated steam rises to escape it heats this cooler surrounding earth causing the earth around the bore hole to expand narrowing the bore hole. How does the gyrotron brain trust plan to mitigate for all that increasing pressure around the bore hole nearer the surface? Seems to me any bore hole digging down to hundreds of degrees of super heated steam will for sure encounter these pressures of the surrounding earth expanding as it heats up. So not just pressure drilling down on any drill bit, but continuous pressure squeezing the drill from the sides and even post drilling as the steam heats the earth surrounding the bore hole. At what point do they drill a wide enough hole diameter that the bore hole remains open and not spitting up earth or rock to the surface that would damage the turbine(s)?? 🤐🤔
Except “The Core” vehicle never truly justified the absurd level of power, a laser of that scale, would have required. Their vehicle was displacing rock of greater magnitudes than the power of our entire civilization😅
Drilling that deep seems like it could be rather dangerous, and have a significant environmental impact when done on a large, global scale. I imagine we will see more of it as they test it out, before scaling up to something global. Earthquakes were one of my first thoughts, followed by the risk of sink holes in certain areas. Definitely skeptical, but the millimeter wave gyrotron is fascinating, and I'm interested in seeing how it's used in the future.
@@labichefurtive2329 next time you go camping, heat up a rock in bonfire for few hours until it is glowing orange and then splash some water on it... same thing is happening underground. It is literally lottery if it will lead to something significant like an earthquake or not. We have no idea if that particular spot we are about to use is under some stress or tension for billions of years or not. In areas without any recorded earthquakes for millennia, most likely not but in places with sporadic mild earthquakes like around Carpathians or Alps (especially south side) I would rather build a nuclear reactor or two.
Not really. They are going to get back much more clean energy than the £500k of dirty energy they used to drill to that level. The only environmental impact will be the oh so ghastly power station above the bore hole that generates the power. I would rather clean energy plants scattered around the place rather than no life at all, or going back to living in caves and becoming hunter gatherers again.
We could do it in West Texas where large amount of drilling have already occurred and environmental damage had already been done so the impact would be minimal. Most of West Texas near Midland Odessa has long since had the oil industry do so much damage that a little more won't make it any worse. Besides it would be kind of poetic if this industry was proved viable in the Permian Basin where oil has been king for a very long time. Sorta like stabbing your enemy in the heart.
Small holes on large volumes generally don't impact structure significantly. If in this case drilling actually provides structure, I wouldn't be worried at all. The land would need to be seriously loaded with boreholes before triggering issues.
In watching this, my mind immediately turns towards geothermal powered desalinization. If it does turn out to be a viable source of energy, I could easily see clean water plants being built in Yemen or along the southern California coast that turn geothermal energy into clean , fresh water. ( I wonder if a variation of the same death ray technology could be used to boil a constant flow of water at greater efficiency than most of our current desalinization technologies.) Having ready access to so much energy might also make it possible to build meaningful quantities of atmospheric carbon dioxide and water vapor extraction systems. Machinery that can pull CO2 and water from the air wouldn't fix climate change on its own, but it might give us time to develop the technologies and societal changes that would do so. It all hinges on how these tests shake out, though. Edit: proving the need for proofreading.
Considering this is a glorified microwave, you could boil water with it, but you're better off letting the heat of the earth boil the liquid instead...or use the energy to electrolyze water for use in hydrogen vehicles or chemically pure water.
@@Houstonruss I had thought of using the heat from the vent itself to boil the water but in my thinking, the problem you would run into is that you are slowly filling your hole with more and more salt. You let gravity Hall salt water down and freshwater vapor comes up but that's salt is still down there. I don't think it would take very long before you stop being able to use the well for direct desalination. You might be able to use something like the binary fluid system. Mat describes here to exchange heat from hot water to seawater but I'm not sure how efficient that would be. Granted, it might very well be more efficient than using a microwave to boil water with the electricity from the same kind of exchange. Either way, it seems to me like it would make for very efficient and potentially relatively inexpensive water plants.
@@das250250 true enough and we would certainly need to have a better relationship with trees. The potential exists, though, to take some of the technology that has already been developed. That can remove CO2 and water vapor from the air and make it work more efficiently than trees. Something that could do the same job but take up less space would work very well in cities. You could imagine it as something like the inverse of oxygen made in the Amazon. Most of the O2 made in the Amazon, by the trees, is used by the other life living in the Amazon. Imagine a world where most of the CO2 generated by a city is reabsorbed by the city. That's all of the humans, cars, and the industrial areas. Again, this isn't a tech that reverses climate change on its own, but it gives us time and time is what is required to change societies. Time and necessity.
Now you have done it! After seeing this production it is impossible to hope to begin to catch up. This mind is permanently blown. It will be taken to somewhere it can rest in peace; and there I will wait with it to see what finally ends up shaking out.
He compares the total cost of physical drilling $30m to 'just' the cost of electricity ($500k) This new system will have MASSIVE costs other than just the electricity, the total cost would probably be more than conventional drilling & definitely more expensive in the beginning. I don't like the fact that he falsified the pricing, it makes it stink of scam.
I understand the problems associated with drilling through unstable areas ,the concern over creating more unstable areas not unlike others caused by mining,drilling, and land fills that gave came back to bite us in the past. Very intrigued by this glass wall created as a fortunate byproduct. Yet I'm left wondering how much variation in density Occurs as the materials your passing though change with the depths?
how do you keep the vapors from depositing on the tool? do you pull it up to break off glass periodically or does the electromagnetic field repel the vapor or something?
One thing I don't understand. So you have one hole with hot gases coming from down below and one hole to send the gases back? If you punch two holes aren't both holes going to spew pressure? Also what happens if you decide to "cap the well"? Is that even possible, considering even solid rock can't contain it? I'd say proceed, but proceed with caution.
The drilling method described sounds a alot like The Core (2003) movie about drilling to the core of the earth with high powered light beams that vaporize the rock out of the way of the craft to reach the Earth's core to like save the world and stuff. This is cool!
Hello Matt, the 4,000 Dollar per kw is for a plant that will work 24/7/365? Solar at 1/4 of the cost is including storage to provide the same 24/7/365?
I am still a little confused as to how this technique allows for positive pressure the whole way down, I would have liked to hear that gone into in further depth. Additionally I wonder hos consistent that glass-like coating is as I imagine a relitively small imperfection could comprimise the whole hole.
According to the laws of energy, when you use the heat underneath to convert into electrical energy you are extracting energy from the ground. Will this affect stability of the ground there in terms of not causing earthquakes or landslides?
This all sounds amazing, and I'm rather excited to see it in action! But... wouldn't pulling all that heated material up to the surface cause additions to the surface temperature of the earth? Perhaps a couple of these wouldn't make any measurable difference, but perhaps the numerous installations around the world? I'm really hoping that this isn't the case, but I'd love to hear the explanation about it. And if it would contribute to the above-ground-temperature, would it then make more sense to bury the geothermal plants under the ground by a certain distance to insulate it, and then run the power lines from that facility up to the surface for distribution?
I see great potential and I also for see some potential problems. Are they factoring in the radioactivity that might be emitted from such a deep hole? The second concern would be that of scale buildup. Just like in places like Yellowstone and Iceland, they must deal with the mineral that perk up from the bed rock. So the scale may be a problem, and that it closes off this 8” hole rather quickly. Just my 2 cent.
Wondering if the heated liquid, that needs to be cooled for underground-loop recirculation, has a large atmospheric warming affect? My thought is continually cooling 500°C for recirculating may put a lot of btu into atmosphere? (Not an engineer.. sorry if it’s an illogical question but looking forward to an expert explanation!)
Similar concept to GA Drilling plasma Drill bit, but GA drilling does it differently, and seem to be further along in the engineering of it. You might well give it a look.
Heya. Old person question. Could this technology be used to 'mine' asteroids? Use the 'beam' to vaporize the rock, and then collect the harvested material at different points in the cooling process?
You mention a conventional hole is necessary to 12+ miles at Newberry. That is ~60,000'. The deepest we go, conventionally is 18-20,000 with all sorts of hole problems. Not only that, but regular geothermal transport of heat by as a tendency precipitate out dissolve mineral as the temperature of fluid pool but you need to transfer heat from the downhill hot water to the fluid in the pipe and vice versa ends up blocking the piping. Yes, it is transferred fluid
... but you need to transfer the heat from the downhole fluid and Rock to the clean fluid in the piping and then vice versa at the surface. It seems to me that the major problem will be drilling the very deep conventional hole. Drilling the "conventional" part of the hole with heat probably is compromised by the amount of water in the rock above basement. If our little part of Colorado we are having terrifically hard time getting money interested in drilling simply to 12,000 feet in a valley fault near abnormally hot rock.
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Thanks Matt. At 70 yo I still like learning new things and you are a great teacher.
Thanks so much for this video. God I hope we could use this technology already. Here in Scandinavia, we rely on windpower mostly, so a second source of carbon-neutral energy would be perfect.
Heck, with this, we could draw off billions of joules of heat energy, thereby lowering the 10km deep rock by many degrees, creating condensing forces in many megatons of solid rock. Heck, I want to live near these. So I can ride the waves of the newly created shearing forces! Yeah! 9.4 super earthquakes in the midwest! yes! We never get the fun disasters. Basically, "they don't have the instabilities in other places" so we have a clean canvas to create all new instabilities! (Or it will be someone else's problems 30 years from now.)
Also think of it this way. The fault areas are cracked and unstable. Much like a measure of sand. The stable zones that are not so cracked are more like a solid piece of glass. If you irregularly heat sand vs glass, which one will destabilize in a worse way? (Answer: the glass, as it has yet to crack up and is strong enough to hold a lot of initial stresses). So stable ground will cause the biggest problems, but a long time from now.
This sounds good. But it may take a slightly different form once complete. If they keep at it, it will probably get there. Seems silly not to use free energy under our feet. Getting at it is the biggest hurdle.
This is such an exciting development!
I never thought I would say this "DRILL Baby DRILL!"
I don't know if you will ever read this, but your channel pushed me to start going to engineering
Go to engineering?
Good for you, enjoy the ride and pride in creating things
@@jaqueitch yeah, where I live it is a short form to say that you are going to the faculty of engineering
Where I live, pushing is an automatic time out
Good on you. A sensible person who acts. Good luck in your career if you get a good one 👍
Awesome! Hopefully all their tests go well. I'd love to see this succeed.
They won't go well.
@@dann5480 blind pessimism is just as stupid as blind optimism
It’s really clever. I hope they have success with their tests and ramp up too.
Hey zack you are awesome dude
I'm surprised you are here, you shocked me that you are interested in news
@@unknown-unknown69 Why?
I like many aspects of this tech, geothermal replacing coal fired and reusing the existing infrastructure is a great plan. I hope this does come to commercial scale and get widely applied.
speaking of Coal, It will ignite underground coal deposits which can burn without air. Ground surveys will have to be precise and careful before such an approach is to be used.
@@KyBrancaccio coal and other fossil fuels would be in the first 3-5km of the borehole, and won’t be a problem as this section is drilled conventionally.
That infrastructure can also be used to supply the drilling operation with the massive power it needs.
WE NEED MORE OIL.
@@jeronimotamayolopera4834 Deep fried chicken mmmmmmm
I remember reading an article about this guy only a few months ago when he published his results; it's amazing to see how quickly this has been picked up and how fast we're getting to industrial scale. Usually that kind of stuff takes ages.
Also, using fusion stabilizing magnetron beams to drill holes to the centre of the planet is both mega sci-fi and reminiscent of the many technological developments that were made during the space race in service of taking a human crew to the moon and back, and how we're still using those technologies today for a wide variety of applications. These stories are always fascinating.
A magnetron is not a gyrotron.
Both produce EM waves within a similar range of spectra, but they are different in terms of design and the upper limits of their output.
Gyrotrons are far more effiicent for super high energy use cases like this.
Very cool! I am eager to see the results from larger scale tests of this tech. One of my biggest concerns is related to insulating the electronics of the gyrotron. We currently struggle with the issue of electronic borehole instruments failing at ~150° C. 500° C is *very* hot and it seems there might need to be a robust cooling system at a level of sophistication that is hard to imagine without further research.
Great video Matt, Carlos, and Paul!
The gyrotron remains on the surface. The "drill string" is a waveguide to carry the radiation down.
@@rubikmonat6589 What about signal degradation of the gyrotron? The approximate 25% gain lose per every connection. Since well drilling pipes are a new connection every 27-32 foot. For that amount of energy and depth either your using Andrew LDF5 at a min (They don't make a reel that long in Chicago for depths mentioned) or polarized tubes like the DEW line. And would still have issues with rock like glass splatter coating at the end. Unless using an ungodly PSI and amount of inert gas like argon thus raising cost. Three Mile Island only reached something like 135 feet below ground due to ground table water. When the pellets and rods decided to leave the pressure vessel.
@@sclabhailordofnoplot2430 That is why the wave guide is an entirely separate entity from the well pipes. The well pipes are just there to line the hole when conventional mechanical drilling is being used. Below that, the tool vitrifies the rock so the hole is basically lined with volcanic glass.
@@sclabhailordofnoplot2430 think of the drill string as segments of rigid waveguide not coax, much lower loss and near zero loss at joints. Yes ungodly amounts of inert gas, not just for clearing the end but pressure to keep the hole open, you would need so much pressure you will likely blow out the glass casing at the shallower depths (you aren't able to use the gravity pressure gradient from the height like you get with mud). I don't think it will work, just from the pressure physics. Then you don't get the string buoyancy from the mud either, so the tensile strength will be eye watering trying to hang all that off a rig.
@@rubikmonat6589 Thanks, So skipping investing. I feel old drilling methods, sandblasting, Water blasting, And brisance explosive carts would be more cost effective. Possibly a new Jack hammer style hydraulic drill head. Issues: The unsupported wave guide pipe (keeping straight in hole), Drill holes are never straight 100% Ridged wave guide can't work, (connections not discussed for signal gain loss Microwave, Laser, Electricity, and RF all have these issues), Heat issue, stronger drill rig for wave guide pipe (good point Rubik), amount of power needed at site, and removal of debris without splattering molten rock on the working end. High PSI means heavier pipe which compounds the line tension issue. Your going to have to keep to 30 foot sections to match the curve of the original drill pipe. These polarized wave guide high psi pipes are going to need stored to prevent oxidization when not in use. Dehumidified so you don't get a moisture block explosion. I'm out, not saying it can't be done. I just foresee someone calling a radar guy to fix the wave guide after its been dented, kinked, coverd in splatter, or broke off 2,000 feet down. Good luck fishing that back up. There going to have to use robotic/or psi driven external expanding open face ball bearings. on the pipe to keep it straighter and grip the sides of the shaft to lessen the pipe weight.
If this pans out, one could even imagine power generation eventually becoming far more localized, with each metro area having power plants, thus reducing the energy loss on long transmission lines. Lots of "ifs" to get there, no question, but this is exciting.
That would also have a big benefit in terms of reducing the reliance on interconnected complex power distribution systems. We've already seen a couple of massive blackouts where tens of millions lose power because a handful of things broke that, in combination, took down the entire grid for the region. Sure, at least some of the root causes of those would still have an impact (Coronal Mass Ejections causing an EMP that fries everything can knock out 20 local grids as easily as it can a single supergrid that covers everything from Quebec to Washington DC), but it does mean that the fallout from such surges wouldn't spread past the edge of the area effected by the CME or whatever itself)
but what happen if there is a natural disaster such as earthquake?
@@yeetboi268 They drill another hole... after the shakes go away.
@@yeetboi268 I think the earthquake would only affect the surface and shallow equipment. There are large deep underground tunnel systems being built in high risk areas to protect essential and high risk services.
@@yeetboi268 in high risk zones alternative power would likely be best, or simply bringing power in from outside the risk zone.
You could drill horizontal once you reach a certain depth if the temperature gradient is high. Also a lot of the cost can be offset if gas pockets like helium, argon, xenon,etc are recovered. It could also be used to set up seismometers and detect the depth of the earthquake and triangulate the location. You could even use the heat for desalination plants from such wells.
I particularly like the idea that you could just drill in the parking lot of an existing power plant & convert it over to geothermal very easily, with zero emissions and a pre-built power infrastructure already connected to it.
Yea, that's one of the best benefits as I see it.
I'm not a geologist. But what will happen in the moment that super heated water or gas is reached, will there be a blow out that engineering cannot cap? Will we have a hole spewing toxic gas into atmosphere? Will it destroy the drilling equipment?
@@0my Well, I'm not a geologist either. It's my understanding that the wellhead maintains pressurization before, during and after drilling. Once the drilling is completed, the fusion drill gets removed, and a pipe assembly circulating some heat-exchanging fluid gets installed into the hole. None of the drilling processes are paticularly exotic or experimental. Iceland's been doing this for years with no procedural crises. In fact, so has the US. As I understand it, the only difference in process is the type of "drillbit," if you will, and the only physical distinction is the depth of the hole. At this point, if they struck oil instead, they'd be disappointed. But it wouldn't cause a disaster.
@@erfquake1 Oil might actually be a bit of an issue when using a laser to super-heat rock but then again maybe it isn't, I don't know enough about the temperatures involved and the flash point of oil (or whatever else they may encounter). I presume they'll use some sort of sensing tool to get an idea before digging too far (some sort of sonar or radar system maybe).
@@erfquake1 There are currently 7 US states that already have grid level geothermal generation of electricity. The FORGE project in the state where I live is one of the US Department of Energy's pilot projects to help overcome hurdles to geothermal energy generation. The challenges are many and varied, not just the drilling method. But it is very true that drilling technology has absolutely been the biggest hurdle.
One thing this video mentions is that the water resources at depths like the ones he is referring to tend to exist in a supercritical state. My brother has a PhD in Chemical Engineering and his thesis was based on supercritical fluid research, so I asked him about it. Turns out, even very small amounts of sulfur added to supercritical water is extremely corrosive and sulfur is definitely present in the water down there. So dealing with water at that depth is no walk in the park.
All of the problems have solutions. And those solutions are probably still a lot easier than anything associated with controlled nuclear reactions of any kind - especially fusion. So breakthroughs like the one described in this video are great news! Just a few more engineering challenges to go and it becomes inevitable. This will be our reality - and because of this breakthrough, it will be sooner not later.
I LOVE your content! When I found you, I didn't care so much about green energy/renewables however as an engineer I was curious about the statistics as well as tech and design concepts behind a lot of your topics. Now that I've been watching you for a bit, I'm looking into geo-thermal cooling for my house and actually excited to buy my next house so I can go solar as well. Thank you for bringing such GREAT topics to this platform and for covering them in such an informative way.
Please keep us up to date on this. This is one of the most practical ways it seems to end some of the fossil fuel dependence. Since the drill rigs are all over the place and the lack of need for casing. Thanks, I enjoy all your research and presentations.
I was just looking at the web site for Iceland's geothermal power production. Pretty amazing. Many power plants and 70% of the electricity generated goes to making aluminum. The energy goes to things we don't think of like longer showers, heating the streets to keep ice off. Some drilling has been required but the sources are so shallow not a lot of drilling has been required.
Imagine that- having such abundance we could be heating streets, no doubt that worlds coming, although from a current prospective it seems impossible .
Wairakei in NZ uses geothermal energy from closer to the surface as well as the Waikato River for a source of cooling water . Relatively shallow Geothermal energy is a good resource but will require careful management …
They also have hydropower with a great loss of nature in Iceland
@@lubricustheslippery5028 We dont have enogh of hydropower as we have to use hundreds of tons of disel to run our industry in my part of Iceland, is that better?
@@donTeo136 they constantly trickle warm water into ponds and lakes to make them more hospitable to the critters too. This type of reliable constant high output energy enables so many uses.
This is the most promising renewable energy source i ever seen. It might have its own limitations or say side effects but compare to other renewable alternatives this is most reliable and very straight forward. Only efforts will goes into making the hole deep enough and prevent it from being collapsed. Apart from that nothing challenging as such.
The Challenge to build a geothermal power plant is always overblown
As long as it doesn't increase earthquakes like fracking or end up venting toxic gases into nearby communities. Companies in the energy sector aren't exactly known for their safety standards. They prefer to let stuff break and pay small fines instead of maintaining equipment.
Agreed. It’s extremely promising and will be revolutionary in the areas that meet the niche requirements. Unfortunately that won’t be all locations, but luckily we have other clean solutions for those locations.
@@michaelandrews4783 Agreed, critics are full of hot air
@@michaelandrews4783 that’s a ridiculous statement, if it were easy there would be a huge number of them out there already, as some companies would have gone for it for being able to undercut all the competition and make huge amounts of money.
I'm skeptical of how clearing the borehole will work over those distances and how the borehole will hold up with it relying solely on the result of melting the surrounding rock layers. They must have thought of these factors already, but that's a lot of pressure difference to rely on one mechanism for lifting debris, and the classic problem of drilling is going through transitions between layers of different types of rock. Not all types of rock will form the same sort of "glass" when melted, so transition boundaries are something that would be worrying to me, particularly when you repressurize the hole with acidic water.
Even though I'm skeptical, I'm really hopeful this works. If it delivers on its promise and the boreholes prove to be sufficiently durable, this could be amazing.
the same thought as well. I don't think the glass surface will stand hundreds bars of pressure. But I suppose to put some tubing should be easier than constantly change drilling head which can stuck.
I had the same concern for turning Martian soil into glass. Some kind of targeted float distillation may be implemented with remote sensing of suspect impurities.
@@plasmabazooka4403 there is pressure inside and outside
Offcourse it won't work.... Its on undecided
I am thinking the same. I was also wondering if they considered the impact of earthquakes on the stability of the "glass". I can see things going wrong there easily
Hopefully, this works as it does in theory, and their testing so far works when actually getting down to the required depth. This would be a great renewable source that works 24/7 with no pollution.
It's these types of videos that remind me the world really isn't as bad as it seems. We might be having hotter summers every year, but we're creating technology now that will benefit us immensely over the next 100+ years.
I took a course in geothermal energy in college and I really wanted to learn more towards it. But was disappointed as there was absolutely no geothermal energy production in India. The tectonically active areas in India is a convergence between two crustal plates and so the crustal thickness along those areas are extremely high as rocks pile up.
That meant way too much drilling is needed to get to superheated water there.
If this technology works and is adopted by India, it would be a game changer.
That would mean there wouldn't be the need for those gigantic dams in Himalayas that are now under serious threat from mudslides and flashfloods from cloudbursts that are happening more frequently because of climate change.
But I'm curious as to how the absence of seismic probe in conventional drilling could impact the process. It's kind of like driving blind.
Though this might require using a separate probe after drilling to collect geological data, it will still help us research and understand a whole lot more about deeper earth. Then again, the lack of physical samples of rocks could still be a severe limitation.
dont the dams supply water?
@@cadelaide they do .
@@cadelaide They do, but when the need for energy production is reduced the dams won't be so big. Bigger dams can also cause reservoir induced earth quakes
Look up Eavor-Loop geothermal. They're able to generate electricity from any location by boring deep.
Could not agree more! it could be a game changer, but in geothermal or OnG drilling and exploration, geological data even just a drill cutting is crucial. We need samples of the formation to figure out what is happening inside the reservoir, there are a bunch of reservoir engineering works to be done that needs physical data of the subsurface formation. Luckily here in Indonesia we have an abundance geothermal energy potential, we dont have any problem with the thickness, its the economical aspects is the main limitation for us
This is an exciting development, it will be interesting to see how it makes its way into the field!
I've seen research in the past looking into low(er)-temperature geothermal systems that use heat engine cycles that don't rely on steam. While not as efficient on a per-unit basis, they could be deployed far more universally. I wonder how those designs and these could mesh.
Interestingly, you don't even need high temperatures to run a steam engine or turbine, because they run into the vacuum of a condenser. So, you can boil of water at ambient temperature, as long as you have some colder reservoir to condense it and remove (dissolved) air from the system.
Effiency is low at these small heat diffentials, of course. I also think "organic rankine"- cycles are better suited than water at these low temperature gradients.
Concerning meshing, at the temperatures implied in the vid, we don't really need to look for altertatives to water/ steam.
Im curious, though, wether we could increase efficency in standard power cycles with another medium.
I have read mercury would work really well, not sure if that is true or even relevant these days :D
Helium was used in research reactors (thtr), and co2 in early british nuclear power plants (magnox), but only to carry heat from the fuel rods to the steam generator.
Not sure wich medium promises most efficiency... il try to find a video on that :)
@@nos9784 cyclopentane is used
Nothing quite says environmentally friendly like poisonous heavy metals. I think the Mercury should be passed over.
Perhaps it'd be possible to site other plants nearby. I recall hearing of a steam plant powered with rice bran. Wind and solar would be typical and maybe nearby hydropower as well.
Your welcome for the idea. I am glad you contacted them and figured more out on the feasibility side. Only time will tell how successful their project will be.
Thanks, Matt; one thing though - I was in the power system industry before I retired. We, that is, Los Angeles, had some geothermal resources. What we found was that drilling is one thing - using that heat was another: The water coming out of the ground was very caustic, resulting in high maintenance costs.
On the other hand, any non-coal/gas resource is welcome. We (LA) also ran significant wind and solar, which has had a hard learning curve. Renewables, so far, have required expensive backup replacement energy (quick-start gas turbines), to fill in for the variability of wind and solar. (On a minute by minute basis renewables could swing hundreds of megawatts if the “farms” are large enough, which they are when these resources are scaled to utility levels .)
I listened to QUAISE Carlos on the Insiders Guide to Energy podcast. I hope this works out. It could be a big clean large scale portion of the solution to our worlds clean energy transition. Thanks for bringing this forward Matt Ferrel.
Thanks Matt, Excellent presentation (with puns)! Also learned some about the gyrotron! So many promising things about this tech. The speakers were very well spoken and didn't spew Sales! Retrofitting current plants and the ability to put these in Non Unstable areas is the most appealing. The other big thing to me is not having to use Nasty slurry's with normal drilling techniques other than through the sedimentary layers. Probably the biggest benefit to me is recycling the steam on both sides of the plant, thereby not destabilizing the well and only having filters to clean/replace on the top end. Can't wait to see how their proto build goes!!
this is really, really cool. If they work out the technical problems this could be the holy grail of renewables. I mean it fixes the largest issue with them - the unpredictability of when it shines and/or blows. Huge thing. Hope they'll make it work someday
This is certainly a cool option. I think they'd definitely need to drill a deep test hole to demonstrate it's ability to withstand the pressure.
Assuming it works as intended, I wonder how differences in minerals might affect the integrity of the glass casing. I hope the project goes well. We need all the baseload power we can get.
Same thought here. I should have trolled comments 1st.lol
The term glass used here doesn't need scare quotes. Glasses are just amorphous, non-crystalline solids, often formed from heated rock cooling rapidly. They don't need to be silicates and some of the strongest glass is formed from doped silicates or non-silicate material. The only reason most human-made glass is silica-based is that silicon is readily available on Earth's surface in sand and silt.
@@lozoft9 The quotes were meant to highlight the non-uniformity of the material in various strata causing potential strength differences down the column of the casing wall. I didn't mean to suggest that it wasn't glass at all.
Fair enough. Quotes removed for clarity.
I just don't understand how this glass is supposed to solve all the problems. I would've thought you couldn't prevent a tube collapse unless you filled it with something denser than they outside pushing in. Or even compressed, filling the tube with something that pushes out rather than a mud for example idk
@@TheAnnoyingBoss you dont need density, you need compressive strength. and if you want to start a fracking operation, then sure start compressing
Excellent vid, and I'm a fan of this technology. The beauty of it is that it can allow us to take advantage of the already built infrastructure of coal/gas plants to repurpose them for green geothermal energy. Not to mention it could be used for millions of years and has none of the negatives that nuclear energy does...just fantastic, I don't know why more people aren't jumping on this technology. Plus you can set up some plants inside cities to provide cheap district heating/hot water as well as power.
This reminds me of the drilling system in the hilariously bad movie: "The Core", only it's orders of magnitude more realistic.
Having your heat-ray not be blocked by the vaporized material is another really important aspect of this, since that's actually one of the big technical hurdles in creating Giant Death lasers.
I wonder if that guy has seen this movie and thought "hey I think we could actually make something like that"
Yeah, immediately thought of laser cutters having issues with offgassing/material diffusing the laser. Seems like there should be some way around it though.
I actually enjoyed that movie. Yea, it's pretty terrible in how it represents science but I found it entertaining despite this. I think I'll watch it again tonight.
@@xniyana9956 it's been a long time since the last time I watched it. But if memory serves correctly, yes the science was terrible but it was consistent in its own logic
@@GameCyborgCh I literally just finished re-watching it, like not even a minute now as of this comment and yes, it is very consistent and also quite frankly, way better than 90% of the woke rubbish being put out today. The bad science doesn't one bit make this movie unenjoyable.
As a big Subnautica fan, Im a believer in geothermal. In that game (SPOILERS), long-gone Aliens left behind massive geothermal plants that powered all their needs. It’s not just a smart use of the infrastructure and energy we already have available around the ground- it’s just downright awe-inspiring. I believe this will be our main source of energy before we ever hit anything like massive solar panel arrays around the sun
Space borne solar has its own benefits for other applications though.
Namely the obvious, power for large scale space based industry like mining asteroids.
Promising! I would love to look back on this energy crisis and think "never woulda guessed geothermal was the answer". Best of luck to the minds behind this and thanks for the video Matt.
There is no energy crisis. We have 65 trillion tons of uranium and 195 trillion tons of thorium in the earth's crust. Energy "scarcity" is caused by people's hesitancy to embrace nuclear energy.
Cheap clean energy has been promised my entire life. I keep hoping that one day our species will put our short -sighted ways behind us and throw our intellect into making sure we have a planet healthy enough to live on. Each year I lose a little hope though. I love seeing this new tech, I just hope that we can get it working fast enough.
We're building all this junk Because no one knows all the solutions to figure out the best way to do things
Well explained, and I like that you didn't cover it in fluff, but even talk of drawbacks or obstacles. I contacted someone from DOE years ago to posit an idea of storing waste heat, from some solar projects, underground to build a kind of artificial and lower temp geothermal source and use either motors that operated on temperature differential (like stirling), or low pressure steam generators to augment the electricity from the solar project. The answer was short, and essentially "we have been looking into geothermal, and it has some obstacles'.
I am thinking that geo thermal boreing induced earthquakes could be a good thing. Inducing an earthquake prior to high buildup of techtonic stresses in theory would induce a lot of non critcal small earthquakes instead of a few catastrophic ones. After an area experiences a big quake, it might be a good area to start a tectonic stress relief project.
It sounds good in theory, but in practice it probably wouldn't work that way. Even a 10km deep borehole still only grazes the lithosphere. That would limit this only to shallow crustal earthquakes. These are rarely the "big ones", those are almost exclusively the domain of tectonic plate interactions, too deep and too large in scale to be affected by drilling. Additionally, you'd have to be able to detect the stress in the upper crust faultlines, calculate its source and vectors, and calculate a model for such release. Then you'd have to drill on the designated spot.
@@TarisSinclair I believe the potential success of geo thermal anywhere will morph to be refered to as geothermal everywhere. The power is for use by the customer so economics should dictate construction of facilities near population centers. That removes the problem of power plant location if they are everywhere. So that may be a good thing if a fracking break up of the earth crust absorbs seismic activity. Because EGS did induce an earthquake in South Korea and an earthquake is the relief of internal stresses within the earth I have to believe (guess really.) that EGS areas will likely have more earthquakes at lower amplitudes of activity. This is apparently a phenomena on the San Andreas fault around Hollister California. (A lot of activity but usually at lower amplitudes) I did not know that the deep big quakes originate below geo thermal well depths. I used to work at a powerplant. We circulated deionized water in a closed loop system for a heat recovery steam generator using gas turbine engine exhaust heat. That was really to protect the heat exchanger but I think there would be a significant maintenance advantage in closed loop systems as opposed to circulating water through fractured rock. I would bet closed loop systems would have little effect on seismic activity.
I don’t get the comparison between the cost of electricity to drill the hole vs. the total cost of drilling a hole using traditional methods. It would make much more sense to compare total costs on both sides.
Yeah seems a little unbalanced when comparing costs, but if they don't have to constantly replace drillbits and can just drill at a consistent rate that would save a massive amount on material and labor costs.
@@ingram2617 that’s assuming there are no replacement electrical drill heads and of course the power needed for the system. That might be inverted from using to making once everything is running though
This is definitely a topic I'd like you to keep us up to date on, its so interesting. This was an excellent and informative piece!!! Thank you!
Matt, I'm just an observer, but this week I informed the provincial Govt. here of using the Iceland example for using Geothermal to power our province in Canada, we grow every wheat above ground,mine uranium, & the province from day 1 was A Potassium Ocean, so we extract the Potash& send it all around the globe to farmers.
It's so funny that fusion may not come to market in our grandchildren's lifetime but the gyrotrons used to operate fusion reactions might solve our energy needs before the end of the century.
@Thomas Davis So true, I certainly hope so.
Geothermal like this is interesting, because it isn't even just always on, it will behave like storage. You are limited by the rate heat can diffuse into your borehole, so you can get extra power out of it for a few weeks by pumping more water down if you then reduce the power draw later to wait for it to warm up again. So it is complementary to conventional renewables.
I completely agree. It would make sense to cycle geothermal down during high solar and wind power times and cycle up when they are low.
Additionally, homes can be heated through a pipe grid. Not uncommon in many cities e.g. in Europe but they still run on natural gas mainly.
Okay so it’s costs 4x a solar farm that produces the same power output, but what is the square footage required for the solar farm vs geothermal? And I like the benefit of hooking straight into decommissioned power plants to reuse infrastructure rather than build new infrastructure. I would think that would be the best for the environment and land usage.
Solar also have another problem: unreliability and you need expensive battery packs to make them usable
With 241 coal power plants in the United States… there is not much opportunity for new energy production.
The electrical lines already being run is the most significant benefit to switching to new base power technology.
This small number of geothermal plants, in a land mass area, makes me feel very good, to be quite honest.
Drilling millions of bore holes to transfer thermal energy to the biosphere would create tremendous anthropomorphic global warming, with no opportunity to recycle the heat, that we get with carbon based carriers and 100% recyclability.
Drilling millions of bore holes into the earth, to transfer the heat, would slowly cool the earth, slow the movement of molten iron, decrease the magnetic field protecting the atmosphere, allow the solar wind to blow more atmosphere from the globe, resulting in evaporation & blowing away of water, and finally resulting in our blue planet turning into a dead rock & no life existing.
These are heavy prices to pay for A/C to stay cool for a little while.
how would something like this handle an aquifer? Or are those typically only in the sedimentary rock layer that would be done with conventional drilling before inserting the heat ray?
Gotta love "happy path" research and idea sales. Even the cost comparison isn't good, comparing just the electricity cost of the proposed method vs. the entire cost of drilling conventionally to the same depth. Lost me right there.
@@CmputrAce because telling the world all the ways it could go wrong would bring in all the investors. I mean is there a CEO of any company that is going to detail all of the ways their new product could fail? It's an idea, and a pretty great one at that, if they are right about it they could transform the energy paradigm. While they are not talking about all the risks I'd be willing to bet they have a board full of all the ways this will go wrong, contingencies for those risks, and new plans to overcome.
Great Content always! Please dont Stop! I have been craving and searching for a channel that talks about exactly the content you share. ABSOLUTLEY LOVE YUR CHANNEL! THANKYOU SO MUCH.
I recently did a presentation on the geothermal topic for Uni looking at types of power production. One of the MAIN aspects besides location dependence was the initial cost of digging down. Talking with a Geology professor it can be usually upwards of 1 mill per km for a bore hole and Geothermal needs to be AT LEAST 5 km deep and usually 3 bores so the costs can get large very quickly.
Being a somewhat drop-in solution to existing power plants could be such a game-changer. I hope this succedes.
Technology and engineering are mindblowing
Good video Matt!
Thanks!
I really respect how you say “Full Transparency:” I do the same thing, although I say “Full Disclosure:”
I respect you very much. I went to school for renewable resources, as well as photo and solar thermal panels (or cells that make up panels).
2:30 "After extracting it and further heating it up to about 400F". What system is used to further heat the geothermal water and how much energy is used to accomplish this required additional heating?
Hearing about this tech being developed (or atleast being reapplied), its extremely reassuring to know that there is a possibility for renewable energy to become the norm in the foreseeable future. This can probably even help to speed up the development of fusion energy (not sure how tbh, might have something to do with the consumption of energy to fabricate and develope technologies atpleast in my mind)
Excellent video as always. I've always found your videos on power production interesting.
Really hopeful technology, cant wait to hear how its progressing.
Don't stop with this information flow, ever. Even if it means you have upset those Hydra chaps that would rather burn the world than change course to a truly intelligent future. Thank you for your efforts Sir
I can’t put into words how cool this is! Thanks for bringing this technology to our attention! I still think molten salt reactors are underutilized however. You’re right, it’s good to pursue a wide range of clean options, I just don’t think that molten salt is getting the funding that it deserves. It’s super safe and the radioactive waste produced is only Radioactive for 500 years. The technology is already proven. But enough on that, I think this new geothermal technology is extremely deserving of funding.
Very good video, well presented. Like that you included interviews.
Thanks for always being a dose of positivity Matt.
Thanks, Daniel.
Maybe I missed it. How many kw/hr does these directed energy beams need to run?
I'm curious about the infrastructure needed to power the beam drilling
A 1 MW system is mentioned in the video. So to run for 100 days of drilling or 2,400 hours is 2.4 million kWh.
Depends on where they plan to drill. Could be connected to the existing power grid, or a diesel generator on a trailer. Since drilling is just the first step in creating the geothermal power plant they'll be building a lot of infrastructure there as well.
@@robertelliott6188 Yep, it's mentionned at 12:51 for reference. And if you do the math, even if you assume a high electricity cost like 20c/kWh like in California, it's still only cost about 480k. Also 1MW is not that much energy, about the equivalent of 100 amercan homes. Quite a few industries need >1MW for their operations, it can be provided with pretty standard infrastructure.
if its to replace an existing power station id say it's not a problem as the infrastructure needed will be there.
i love it how sponsored videos these days have "most replayed" just after the sponsor message.
this doesn't say anything about your content Matt, you make great videos.
This is the way to go! Turn all those steam driven coal/gas burning power stations into nice friendly geothermal powered stations and you get maximal use from your initial investment, then after the setup costs have disbursed, free electricity apart from the maintenance costs!! So I hope they get round to sorting out all the wrinkles soon. Great series of informative and interesting videos. Keep up the good work!
I love your extensive caption list.
I love discussing tech stuff with my father but he doesn't speak English so having arabic captions became the bridge for us to watch your videos together.
Thank you!
Sounds like oil drilling just got much cheaper as well
How?
It’s all fun and games until the heat ray reaches the oil deposit and lights it all on fire
@@cwillis92 cheaper access to deeper oil reserves
It’s only (potentially) cheaper when you’re drilling through dense igneous rock, but oil is only found in sedimentary rock (like coal, it’s from dead plants)…not sure how common it is to have sedimentary rock with oil in it under a thick enough layer of volcanic rock that this technology would be superior to conventional drilling…this is cheaper when you go super deep, past the sedimentary layers.
@@theodoremurdock9984 good point.
Theoretically, this sounds good. It does need testing, one item that needs to be ruled out … would reduce stabilizing stress due to depth yielding unwanted results.
What? Why are you asking a question like that? Email the man in the know in the video for those answers. Also if you are so into the science of this geology why are you not working for a big company that is dealing in this science?
Me personally wouldn’t ask that question because if I did I certainly wouldn’t be sitting around asking such questions, I would be in the thick of it and trying to get a job as I would feel competent as you do and applying to work one of these experimental digs.
Or are you just winging it as if you are in the know?
@@Vile_Entity_3545 Are you upset at something in your life? Did you lose all your money in Bitcoin? Why do you seem so upset about a simple question? Do you need a hug? Maybe you're upset because you were turned down for that promotion. If that's the case, I would think it has something to do with your interpersonal skills. Anyway, try to cheer up. Who knows, maybe you'll come up with a really harmful thing to say to me and then you can feel better about your life. Looking forward to hearing back. Have a great day.
sounds like you are undecided
far too many "egg spurts" know until pet theories are found faulty
@@michaelsallee7534 You sound like an egg farmer yourself there. How many chickens you got? Or is it duck? Maybe quail? Aaaaany who... how's your bitcoin doing? Don't worry mate, it'll rebound.
in the graphic it looks like both the injection well and extraction well are going to the same general depth, presumably reaching the same rising hot geothermal waters.
there is no "loop" depicted to suggest a path where the intake is made to turn around and come back up the extract.
so how does the injection well prevent that same heat and geothermal waters from rising up itself?
even if cool water is being pumped down it, what is preventing the resulting steam from building up pressure and trying to come back up the same intake?
It seems to me that dealing with the rock vapor is a major issue. To start with, if it's condensing out on the walls to form the casing, what stops it also condensing out on the wave guide? Then there's the question about flushing it all out to the surface. That column of rock dust loaded argon is going to be pretty heavy so the argon pressure will have to be very high which will have to be contained inside the wave guide system.
Maybe, but I'd like to see some more details.
It always bothers me how the costs per kw of wind and solar energy don’t include all of the batteries, peaker plants and excess capacity needed to actually run these systems consistently. It seems like a clever lie that these industries use. I’m excited for Geothermal energy as it can be consistent and reliable without much added infrastructure
The Green Industry has mastered lobbying and propaganda at this point.
Especially solar - the cost is infinite at night.
That and the cost of moving energy long distances.
This sounds like one of the best option for renewable energy. Gonna be great if this comes to light ✨️
Is it really renewable? Large reservoir of energy for sure, but it is finite.
@@mattw7949 As is our plantes life overall.
If 0.1% of it are good for 2 million years of energy usage will it be really a concern for humanity?
@CrustedCheese (love the name btw!), Valid point. I believe humanity will extinguish itself well before that time. Maybe this will let us keep the lights on while we do it. ;)
@@mattw7949 true its not renewable really. Guess that term is used on anything that isn't fossil fuels
@@mattw7949 Sadly, I agree to that - and thanks :)
How deep have they been able to drill with this system?
I spent 45 years in Alberta drilling wells as deep as 2,800 meters
Your glassy rock is probably also VERY brittle
As an experienced Geoscience professional, I hope you are right, but I hope you have a way to circulate the material to the surface.
This is more complex than you can imagine.
Failures in procedures can kill people, ask me how I know. 😔
It says at 11:35 that they've drilled three feet.
Alberta would be an ideal place to do a pilot of this idea: lots of drilling expertise, lots of existing unused boreholes, thoroughly mapped geology, etc., etc.
But like you I'll retain some healthy skepticism about this until they demonstrate "drilling" into the Precambrian basement.
Yes. I'm not experienced in this field, but I can do basic mass balance equations. The work that it takes to lift the vaporized rock is mass * g * height. If their plan is to use flushing gas, they'll either need insanely high differential pressures to achieve high specific thrust (like high pressure gas on input side aided by massive vacuum on output side) OR mechanical removal like auger conveyance which is probably not practical at these depths. Needless to say, the challenges seem big.
The glass lining of the hole. also got this layman's attention. I'd imagine if the drill makes any contact to those glass walls, it might break. I'd be very interested in a proof of concept to let's say 1km of depth!
@@JonMartinYXD I feel like the best way to circulate out 'cuttings' would be to pump water down string, and out port it at various depths, and use similar devices to the gyrotron to vaporise the water as it passes from string to annular to make sort of hot gas boosting stations up the hole, that should at least keep the vapourised rock media piping up to surface without slowing down or cooling down and precipitating minerals in the annular. But redunculously complicated.
@@eaaeeeea it would be mote like rock than actual glass. but it wouldn't have any tensile strength, so bore wall in push would pretty easily create problematic shearing.
With a single hole down how do you over come vapor lock? Water goes down heats up comes back up as steam? Do you wait for it to clear before sending down more water? A loop would seem to be more efficient how would you accomplish it?
great to see so much applied tech on this channel....looking forward to seeing you hut 1m subs - you deserve it.
Another excellent video 😉
I've always wondered, why Yellowstone isn't used as a GIANT thermal powerplant,
While eventually learning and helping to release its potential excess pressure.
dude FR
bro its pretty leave it alone
@@Neon-ws8er pretty is no good when there is nobody around to see it. Are you one of these types that would rather humans were not on the planet?
If so then why are you here adding to the problem?
I would rather have all of America’s power produced by the pretty park and life survives than life gone.
Anyway this tech is going to solve that, but if we had to use Yellowstone I would be there to counter protest you into submission if it meant doing so to save the planet.
National Parks... Can't be touched.
@@addohm For obvious reasons. If you are trying to save the planet, popping a factory in one of the most biodiverse areas in the world isn't exactly the way to go.
very interesting, and I always love it when we develop some super crazy lab hardware for some very esoteric reason, but once we have it, find a bunch of other neat things to do with it once it becomes cheap and easy. 2 things from this family of tech are magnetrons (super secret through WW2, but now used to casually reheat your lunch in a $100 microwave) and lasers (which were a pure science invention, no practical intent, but serve humanity in the highest level, the best cat toy ever. fibreoptics are overrated).
I particularly like with this that its main consumable is electricity, and its main resulting product is electricity. In my part of the world, about 50% of our power comes from ~6 coal power stations within about 30km of each other, but wire all that power a good 300km to where 80% of the populations power is used. there is alot of infrastructure built over 200 years to support that. the town has little other industry other than coal. would be nice if we could use surplus power (we are rolling out wind and solar elsewhere, but will keep the coal plants alive because we need the base load) to drill bores to convert at least part of the infrastructure, gradually, over to something like this. looks like a triple win to me.
Curious, whats your country?
how about nuclear power aswell?
The 2 miles deep gold mines in South Africa have a problem called rock bursts where the mine tunnels suddenly slam shut compressing the air so it becomes white hot and comes out at supersonic speeds and buildings two miles up on the surface are thrown up in the air by the shock wave. The walls of the tunnels slowly creep inward because the rock is under about 10,000 pounds of pressure and it is hot. The pressure is about one psi per foot of depth and the rock flows more readily as it gets hotter with increasing debth.
I invested in geothermal exploration in the Cooper Basin in Australia some 14 years ago. The bore was 4500m deep and the proof of concept was established until embrittlement of the steel bore lining caused failure. I lost my money but I still see geothermal power as the nearest thing to a perpetual motion machine we will find. If those Cooper Basin bores had been drilled by this method the metalurgical issues would not have occurred and we might now be enjoying the fruits of clean baseload energy, and I would be enjoying the fruits of my investment. I was just too soon with it.
I've always had geothermal energy on my mind as a renewable source of energy. Back then, I thought going down 200m into the ground would have been enough. I was so wrong by a magnitude. But this new drilling method sounds promising. Can't wait to see their POC project.
Did they get the idea from "Dr Braz"?
2 orders of magnitude, in fact, 20,000m! 200m is a good depth for ground source heat pumps though, but then you at the only getting slightly warm water and have to use electricity to extract useful heat from it. As opposed to geothermal where the heat is so concentrated too can get electricity out. I don't like when Matt says geothermal for ground source because they are such different things that it can lead to some confusion to use the same name.
I remember the movie but forgot the character’s name. These guys are a little older than me, perhaps the book that inspired the movie may have had its influences. It might be better to race toward being the highest producing open source product than to get bogged down in too much intellectual property.
The problems that I see with this drilling technique are purely related to maintenance and upkeep costs.
Glass may have a strong factor against compression, but it is horrible against sheering. A single minor quake and *crack* goes your mining tube.
Following that, what if your fluid line needs replacing, either through normal wear and tear or damage like said minor quake?
This is promising, but all this is is a new way to drill. There are still a LOT of functional problems geothermal will need to combat.
The glass would be a harden for of glass. Think like gorilla glass for your phone screen except for multiple times stronger b/c of the different types of resin used for the creation of the glass.
Wouldn’t that affect any borehole even a conventional one? Geothermal is already in use so this must have been rectified or maybe they can just case the borehole with traditional methods?
Maybe coat the inside of the tube with a flexible material so cracks wont cause leakage? Keeping the tube somewhat intact would allow for repairs. Or just bore another hole, if the method costs 10 times less, you can do it ten times for the same cost.
It would be a simple process to insert a pipe...which you wouldneed ANYWAY to pull heat fluid up and down...so two pipes really.
Is it glass or cooled down magma? I think that the success to one project is proper research and risk assesment. Sure you could pick one drilling spot between tectonic plates, but why :)
Rocket drills have been a known technology for decades and haven't taken off anywhere, so I'm not convinced that this will get picked up either. Still, interesting idea.
"Rocket drills have been a known technology for decades and haven't taken off anywhere,"
They are not supposed to take off, if they were they would just be called rockets.
;-)
I would’ve preferred to see the electricity requirements measured in units other than dollars since the cost of electricity is variable. Joules or kilowatt hours perhaps.
Thanks Matt. One potential future topic: I would be interested to learn about geothermal electricity generation off-grid for a small remote community. Even if the costs do not seem all that feasible at the moment, it would be interesting to see where the available technology is currently. Maybe, pretend you have 500+ acres and truly want to be off-grid. I really appreciate learning about your new home project.
I would ask a number of questions. 1) How far has the drill done so far, what depth? 2) How could you work out the cost before you have some idea of the cost per depth? So many of these new ideas are turning out to be totally impossible. Too good to be true.
But it is fusion inspired lol.. all hype
Yep, some potential downsides, just like our current portfolio of energy sources. The more experimentation, the more answers are generated and the more possible refinements or obstacles are encountered. Such is science. Or, we can stick with 1950s tech. Our choice. I recall being shocked that when petroleum was in its infancy, an unstable and highly dangerous byproduct of making kerosene was a real problem. The industry wasn't sure what to do with it, and it was often dumped in rivers and ground. It was too hazardous to handle. Should of quit then, right? That substance was gasoline.
@@fredd4526 Nice story but I very much doubt that it's true. All products derived from coal and oil have rapidly been put to one use or another. There are sources online which claim that gasoline was often "discarded" before the invention of the automobile, but it's more likely to have been the subject of a lot of research and used for various purposes in the intervening decades - just not by the companies set up to produce kerosene.
Very curious to see if the drilling truly can be implemented anywhere and everywhere. Being able to plug a geothermal steam source into existing turbine systems currently running off coal is huge: by retrofitting, you get to focus all resources on the primary source of energy as opposed to reinventing the wheel for power generation. Same principle with using hydrogen instead of natural gas: all existing gas transport infrastructure can be adapted/converted, as opposed to being torn down wholesale for something brand new.
The more cynical part of me can't help seeing that implementing these conversions would unlock a power source far less inconsistent than the more mainstream renewables - and therefore less at the mercy of high-capacity batteries. Just like how efficient wireless power transmission - should anyone ever invent it - would suddenly make every copper mine in the world far less in-demand.
Sadly, I can't put a geothermal plant in my car., so the battery market is safe. now, WHICH battery market, that is the question. With nearly unlimited power, and a new source for platinum, H2 might actually win out. Otherwise, some form of catalytic battery will be needed.
The existing natural gas infrastructure is leaky enough, and hydrogen is even harder to contain. There is a 0% chance we could reuse the natural gas transport pipes for hydrogen transportation.
Wireless power is invented. Radio has been around for along time. A lot of energy is lost in transmission. There is no practical way to regain what is lost. Solar is also just that waves from the sun. Distance matters, the electron flow needs to be controlled. That is why your wireless phone charger is millimeters from its Transmitter to receiver. To better understand these things i recommend you look into Amateur radio ARRL and a HAM license. Most transmission lines and Home power lines/cords are aluminum, by the way for cost and lack of copper. Aluminum vibrates a lot under load.
My fear is, if this tech works, the oil and gas industry will just use it to get cheaper access to fossil fuels, then we'll be right back where we started.
They will DEFINITELY do that, but if you can just keep digging and hit geothermal energy viability, they might not be able to compete with that. Fingers crossed.
They might, but probably will not, because their strategy so far was to drop oil and nat gas prices significantly in the 2010s to bankrupt little companies. Then once the larger companies felt like they had a foothold to raise prices significantly. The Ukraine War does influence crude and nat gas prices, but part of it is used as an excuse to raise prices.
This tech, like fracking, may help the little guy get a foothold again, which could cause a crash in oil prices again, which is a possible future, or the larger companies may maintain control, do everything they can to keep prices higher, and avoid this technology. It will be interesting to see what will happen.
For many reasons, this tech is not suitable for use in the sedimentary zone where oil and gas are found.
I definitely see that concern, but I’m not too worried about that. If Quaise succeeds at their goals, geothermal base load power plants will be one of the cheapest and consistent ways to generate power. Corporations will follow the easy money (if Quaise succeeds). Combine that with many countries policies to phase out carbon emissions and you may have a winning formula.
@@UndecidedMF So how much energy can be "extracted" from one of these holes over extended periods of time? So without depleting the heat reserviour? There is only so much heatflux possible, about 0.1 MW/km² according to wiki (Geothermal energy). So how many holes to drill to extract this power, to cover a whole km²? Does that still make sense if the location is not right?
I haven't heard anyone from Quasie talk about hove they are going to connect the down and up bore holes. The need for an ultra straight waveguide eliminates directional drilling, and I doubt you can frack at those pressures.
Question on drilling Matt. Nearer the surface the temperatures are a lot cooler. As the superheated steam rises to escape it heats this cooler surrounding earth causing the earth around the bore hole to expand narrowing the bore hole. How does the gyrotron brain trust plan to mitigate for all that increasing pressure around the bore hole nearer the surface? Seems to me any bore hole digging down to hundreds of degrees of super heated steam will for sure encounter these pressures of the surrounding earth expanding as it heats up. So not just pressure drilling down on any drill bit, but continuous pressure squeezing the drill from the sides and even post drilling as the steam heats the earth surrounding the bore hole. At what point do they drill a wide enough hole diameter that the bore hole remains open and not spitting up earth or rock to the surface that would damage the turbine(s)?? 🤐🤔
So the movie "The Core" was actually quite on spot haha
Except “The Core” vehicle never truly justified the absurd level of power, a laser of that scale, would have required. Their vehicle was displacing rock of greater magnitudes than the power of our entire civilization😅
Drilling that deep seems like it could be rather dangerous, and have a significant environmental impact when done on a large, global scale. I imagine we will see more of it as they test it out, before scaling up to something global. Earthquakes were one of my first thoughts, followed by the risk of sink holes in certain areas. Definitely skeptical, but the millimeter wave gyrotron is fascinating, and I'm interested in seeing how it's used in the future.
why would it be dangerous ?
@@labichefurtive2329 next time you go camping, heat up a rock in bonfire for few hours until it is glowing orange and then splash some water on it... same thing is happening underground. It is literally lottery if it will lead to something significant like an earthquake or not. We have no idea if that particular spot we are about to use is under some stress or tension for billions of years or not. In areas without any recorded earthquakes for millennia, most likely not but in places with sporadic mild earthquakes like around Carpathians or Alps (especially south side) I would rather build a nuclear reactor or two.
Not really. They are going to get back much more clean energy than the £500k of dirty energy they used to drill to that level. The only environmental impact will be the oh so ghastly power station above the bore hole that generates the power. I would rather clean energy plants scattered around the place rather than no life at all, or going back to living in caves and becoming hunter gatherers again.
We could do it in West Texas where large amount of drilling have already occurred and environmental damage had already been done so the impact would be minimal. Most of West Texas near Midland Odessa has long since had the oil industry do so much damage that a little more won't make it any worse. Besides it would be kind of poetic if this industry was proved viable in the Permian Basin where oil has been king for a very long time. Sorta like stabbing your enemy in the heart.
Small holes on large volumes generally don't impact structure significantly. If in this case drilling actually provides structure, I wouldn't be worried at all.
The land would need to be seriously loaded with boreholes before triggering issues.
In watching this, my mind immediately turns towards geothermal powered desalinization. If it does turn out to be a viable source of energy, I could easily see clean water plants being built in Yemen or along the southern California coast that turn geothermal energy into clean , fresh water. ( I wonder if a variation of the same death ray technology could be used to boil a constant flow of water at greater efficiency than most of our current desalinization technologies.)
Having ready access to so much energy might also make it possible to build meaningful quantities of atmospheric carbon dioxide and water vapor extraction systems. Machinery that can pull CO2 and water from the air wouldn't fix climate change on its own, but it might give us time to develop the technologies and societal changes that would do so.
It all hinges on how these tests shake out, though.
Edit: proving the need for proofreading.
Considering this is a glorified microwave, you could boil water with it, but you're better off letting the heat of the earth boil the liquid instead...or use the energy to electrolyze water for use in hydrogen vehicles or chemically pure water.
Machines that pull CO2 from the air are already available,we call them trees
@@Houstonruss I had thought of using the heat from the vent itself to boil the water but in my thinking, the problem you would run into is that you are slowly filling your hole with more and more salt. You let gravity Hall salt water down and freshwater vapor comes up but that's salt is still down there. I don't think it would take very long before you stop being able to use the well for direct desalination. You might be able to use something like the binary fluid system. Mat describes here to exchange heat from hot water to seawater but I'm not sure how efficient that would be. Granted, it might very well be more efficient than using a microwave to boil water with the electricity from the same kind of exchange. Either way, it seems to me like it would make for very efficient and potentially relatively inexpensive water plants.
@@das250250 true enough and we would certainly need to have a better relationship with trees. The potential exists, though, to take some of the technology that has already been developed. That can remove CO2 and water vapor from the air and make it work more efficiently than trees. Something that could do the same job but take up less space would work very well in cities. You could imagine it as something like the inverse of oxygen made in the Amazon. Most of the O2 made in the Amazon, by the trees, is used by the other life living in the Amazon. Imagine a world where most of the CO2 generated by a city is reabsorbed by the city. That's all of the humans, cars, and the industrial areas. Again, this isn't a tech that reverses climate change on its own, but it gives us time and time is what is required to change societies. Time and necessity.
Now you have done it! After seeing this production it is impossible to hope to begin to catch up. This mind is permanently blown. It will be taken to somewhere it can rest in peace; and there I will wait with it to see what finally ends up shaking out.
Thanks!
Thank you!
He compares the total cost of physical drilling $30m to 'just' the cost of electricity ($500k) This new system will have MASSIVE costs other than just the electricity, the total cost would probably be more than conventional drilling & definitely more expensive in the beginning. I don't like the fact that he falsified the pricing, it makes it stink of scam.
I understand the problems associated with drilling through unstable areas ,the concern over creating more unstable areas not unlike others caused by mining,drilling, and land fills that gave came back to bite us in the past. Very intrigued by this glass wall created as a fortunate byproduct. Yet I'm left wondering how much variation in density Occurs as the materials your passing though change with the depths?
how do you keep the vapors from depositing on the tool? do you pull it up to break off glass periodically or does the electromagnetic field repel the vapor or something?
One thing I don't understand. So you have one hole with hot gases coming from down below and one hole to send the gases back? If you punch two holes aren't both holes going to spew pressure?
Also what happens if you decide to "cap the well"? Is that even possible, considering even solid rock can't contain it?
I'd say proceed, but proceed with caution.
The drilling method described sounds a alot like The Core (2003) movie about drilling to the core of the earth with high powered light beams that vaporize the rock out of the way of the craft to reach the Earth's core to like save the world and stuff. This is cool!
Hello Matt, the 4,000 Dollar per kw is for a plant that will work 24/7/365? Solar at 1/4 of the cost is including storage to provide the same 24/7/365?
2:22 could we extract rare earths from the heated water welling up from below? does it have to be static binary?
I am still a little confused as to how this technique allows for positive pressure the whole way down, I would have liked to hear that gone into in further depth. Additionally I wonder hos consistent that glass-like coating is as I imagine a relitively small imperfection could comprimise the whole hole.
According to the laws of energy, when you use the heat underneath to convert into electrical energy you are extracting energy from the ground. Will this affect stability of the ground there in terms of not causing earthquakes or landslides?
This all sounds amazing, and I'm rather excited to see it in action! But... wouldn't pulling all that heated material up to the surface cause additions to the surface temperature of the earth? Perhaps a couple of these wouldn't make any measurable difference, but perhaps the numerous installations around the world? I'm really hoping that this isn't the case, but I'd love to hear the explanation about it.
And if it would contribute to the above-ground-temperature, would it then make more sense to bury the geothermal plants under the ground by a certain distance to insulate it, and then run the power lines from that facility up to the surface for distribution?
I see great potential and I also for see some potential problems. Are they factoring in the radioactivity that might be emitted from such a deep hole? The second concern would be that of scale buildup. Just like in places like Yellowstone and Iceland, they must deal with the mineral that perk up from the bed rock. So the scale may be a problem, and that it closes off this 8” hole rather quickly. Just my 2 cent.
Wondering if the heated liquid, that needs to be cooled for underground-loop recirculation, has a large atmospheric warming affect? My thought is continually cooling 500°C for recirculating may put a lot of btu into atmosphere? (Not an engineer.. sorry if it’s an illogical question but looking forward to an expert explanation!)
Similar concept to GA Drilling plasma Drill bit, but GA drilling does it differently, and seem to be further along in the engineering of it. You might well give it a look.
Heya. Old person question. Could this technology be used to 'mine' asteroids? Use the 'beam' to vaporize the rock, and then collect the harvested material at different points in the cooling process?
You mention a conventional hole is necessary to 12+ miles at Newberry. That is ~60,000'. The deepest we go, conventionally is 18-20,000 with all sorts of hole problems. Not only that, but regular geothermal transport of heat by as a tendency precipitate out dissolve mineral as the temperature of fluid pool but you need to transfer heat from the downhill hot water to the fluid in the pipe and vice versa ends up blocking the piping. Yes, it is transferred fluid
... but you need to transfer the heat from the downhole fluid and Rock to the clean fluid in the piping and then vice versa at the surface.
It seems to me that the major problem will be drilling the very deep conventional hole. Drilling the "conventional" part of the hole with heat probably is compromised by the amount of water in the rock above basement.
If our little part of Colorado we are having terrifically hard time getting money interested in drilling simply to 12,000 feet in a valley fault near abnormally hot rock.