To Anna and Christopher. From an engineering point of view, you are doing an amazing job. I also think your heart is in the right place, genuinely looking for a clean alternative solution. - Kudos for that. My fear is that in the long run, you will be thrown under the bus by people whose goal is not a better solution for the people but a better solution for their personal profit and power.
I can see it now. The 'green' extremists wanting to shut down the drilling because it is bad for the environment just as they believe fracking is. I'm sure they will try it even though there is no fracking here. The only Eavor borrows from the oil industry is the deep drilling tech. Even then, they are developing some of their own unique technology. Go for it kids! (I call them kids because I'm 77 years old.)
@@TheAnticorporatist They probably don't have to exactly meet the LCOE of PV+battery because they are a firm generator. ("firm" means it never stops) They are a clean source of baseload power, which is critical for having an efficient grid.
Only if our representatives got involved and made this a government paid program so that power would be free of charge to the world!! would that be too much to ask?
Not everything is about price. The low cost of Solar is irrelevant at night. LCOE of geothermal has to be taken into account along with the LCOE of sun and wind energy production because these systems work in tandem. No?
Re: Closed Cycle Geothermal. I first saw this presented at UCLA 50 years back. Some of the problems then were drilling equipment unable to tolerate temperatures at those depths, as well for heat exchangers, & control precision to locate & maintain such equipment at those depths & highly adverse conditions. Finally, plus a great investment opportunity! ruclips.net/video/gV92QFDb5qQ/видео.html
That's awesome there's young people left that are using the brains that's givin to them to help the world instead of some woke ideologies! Hats off to Eavor
Whenever big oil wants in on a renewable start up, you can pretty much forget about it. But i am amazed at how well it worked, the thermal current running for years as well as the ability to change output and even store up thermal capacity is awesome.
In the 1960s, New Zealand built its first Geothermal power station in Taupo (central North Island). Our family moved there and Dad worked on the first two bores and the station itself as a carpenter. The science was so new that we were the first, Government funded and built, full scale base load generation plant in the world. To see the fields today is fascinating, the hundreds of kilometers of pipes cover many square km of farmland. I would love to see this new tech in other parts of less Geothermal activity, here in NZ. Thanks to all of you for a very interesting show.
Been subscribed for a long time, thanks for asking ‘dumb’ questions so the rest of us don’t have to 😂 This looks really promising, a great way to handle some of the baseload without needing the sun to shine or the wind to blow!!
I've been following Eavor for a couple years. IMO, they need to adopt plasma drilling technology which is hopefully coming on-line soon. This will significantly reduce the cost of drilling to even greater depths than Eavor is currently doing and make their energy production truly the lowest LCOE (levelized cost of energy). Hope that Europe can adopt this technology as fast as possible so that Putin can be made redundant and everyone can enjoy clearer air at the same time. Exciting times.
They don't even need to go very deep. 50C return water would be plenty warm enough for heating. Winter heating is one of the greatest uses of energy in Europe.
@@privatemale27 it makes you wonder, after the heat has been used to create electricity, could the hot water be pumped to the surrounding area to heat homes before being sent back down the well.
@@jonwelch564 That is pretty common in other geothermal installations. They don't need to use the same water either. They can use a heat exchanger to heat treated city water.
Nice to see old school tech coming back around. Those first hot water radiators heating buildings and apartments in say New York relied on closed loop convection to circulate water back to the boiler. Just using geothermal to replace the coal and heating oil and using the heat to generate electricity. All off the shelf technology combined in a novel system, good on you.
A little over 50 years ago, I lived in an apartment that was heated with that type system. It was nice and warm in winter even if the electricity went off.
The next step is to investigate Quaise Energy and AltaRock. Quaise is commercializing a drill bit that melts its way through basement rock and leaves a glass lining behind that obviates need to install a casing (50% of drilling cost). They hope to be able to drill 20km holes and get 450-500C temp. AltaRock in Seattle will use their technology to drill the first hole in Oregon.
Some years ago I worked in the 'oil patch'. I must agree the ability to drill precisely was amazing back then, and today I only assume it is more so. ... On of my employers was Amoco, before purchased by BP, in exploration 20Million was a typical exploration well, so 100Million is not that much money considering they put billions into exploration annually. When I was working the Exploration would find a revisor, guess as to its size then sell it to the 'production' company that would put in many well in a field and operate and produce it for many years. Eventually most fields get sold to secondary production companies (smaller oil companies).. Oh the production company typically sells the oil to their own or others refineries who the sell the refined products to wholesalers or retailers. Every step along the way each company was normally required to make their own 'profit', so the true level of profit in these companies was often obfuscated, IMHO.
Stationed at Naval Air Station (NAS) Keflavik in 1979-80. The geothermal power plant extracted hot brine water and used heat exchangers to heat the fluid that flashed to steam to run turbines that produced electricity. Additionally the fluid was used to heat water for the heating district. So the NATO base got electricity and hot water to heat all the buildings. Finally, the plant dumped excess brine water into the lava field. That waste water was the origin of the Blue Lagoon which back then was an undeveloped pond with some stairs so that you could get in and out without slicing your feet up. PS - Hopefully, if there is an eruption, the new lava flow won’t destroy the plant!
Love the concept. The question I would have pursued would have been their ability to overcome the heat degradation on the drilling equipment. I believe that has been the limiting factor on how deep we can drill Is it breakthroughs in material science that will allow them to overcome that.
Standard drilling equipment like the drill bit and the pipe used to rotate it can handle temperatures (1600+ degrees F) way above what their target temps are. When you start getting into directional drilling tools, downhole motors to spin the bit without spinning the pipe, and their tools used to intersect the two boreholes, those are the items that really don't have very high temperature ratings due to the moving parts, electronics, and rubber seals (probably 300 to 400 degrees F or 150 to 200 degrees C). Any technology they have for hotter temps than those they will have to develop if they haven't already. Mostly that means developing non-rubber seals and making sure the materials used in tight tolerance applications have similar coefficients of thermal expansion. Also developing electronics that are either non-silicon based or are encased in some type of dewar flask style insulation.
Thermosiphons are old technology. The Model T Ford used that method to cool its engine with no water pump at all. The radiator does have forced air from the engine through its fan, and the temperature difference alone is sufficient to cause the water to circulate. Look at old trucks and other cars from that era and you will see the radiator is mounted quite high compared to cars with water pumps. Cars from my childhood also tended to have thermosiphon effects even when there was a water pump. Like the hole in the bumper under the radiator for a crank to start the car if the electric starter failed, cars were made with redundancy to continue working back then. Today if the computer dies so does the modern car.
A Model T probably couldn't produce much heat, so a heat syphon might have been sufficientl. Old cars used to boil over when I was a kid, I don't have that kind of a problem now days. My work van has just had it's first problem at 87,000 miles, the exhaust injector has just failed causing it to go into limp mode (not a real issue, but Ford want you to get it fixed). Old cars cant compete because modern technology beats it hands down.
Imagine a porous rock, like a sponge. There are a lot of down hole tools. When I was designing tools for Schlumberger the limit was 200c and approx. 25,000 ft. Good job.
Yes! Closed loop Rankine cycle with lower quality heat. Low boiling point fluid in a closed loop driving a high pressure turbine. Very little maintenance, no emissions, no water usage, can be done anywhere, and at much lower depths. Makes perfect sense!
I was very interested in the casing/lining of the wells question but the answer focused on something else, unfortunately. I am so excited for this tech and the rest of the Geothermal ventures, I wish them the best of luck!!
@@jonwelch564 except wanting to line the well not plug it since if the drill a 6 inch hole a half inch lining cuts the flow to 25/36 of the volume and a one inch lining would cut the flow to 16/36 of the drilled 6 inch hole. Interestingly the larger the diameter the easier fluid flow but relatively less surface to volume so it does not warm as fast
After a well has been drilled, open-hole wireline logs are run to identify productive formations. These logs accurately indicate the borehole caliper, minerals, porosity and types of fluid present in each formation. Another wireline tool can then be run to measure the permeability and retrieve samples of the fluid. In productive intervals with low permeability and containing high viscosity fluids, downhole reamers are often used to enlarge the original borehole. Doing this increases the productive capability of an interval and minimizes production damage to the borehole. These reamers have extendable arms lined with PDC cutters that fold downward along the sides of the tool. It is placed in the BHA (bottom hole assembly) and is designed to pass through the previously drilled borehole. When it reaches the desired reaming depth, mud pumps provide the hydraulic pressure necessary to force these arms outward and make contact with the borehole while the drill string is being rotated and moved up and down. This procedure continues until a larger borehole has been created in each zone of interest. The arms on these reamers are pulled back onto the tool when the pump pressure drops, thus allowing it to be moved to ream another interval or brought back out.
Centralizers are attached to casing as it is being run down the well to assure the casing will be held away from the borehole in the areas that will be cemented. This is to assure cement will be able to bond with the casing in order to seal the annulus of the well. A cement float shoe and sometimes float collars are placed in the string of casing as it is being run in order to control where cement will be pumped into the annulus of the well. After all of the casing has been run, a calculated amount of a customized cement blend is pumped down the casing, followed by a measured amount of water sufficient to displace it in the casing, thus forcing the cement into the annulus of the well. The string of casing is hung from the derrick of the drilling rig and isn’t moved until the cement has harden, and then a wireline bond log is run to confirm it has bonded with the casing. If not, then a cement squeeze may be necessary to assure the well has been completely sealed between the borehole and casing. This is extremely important to protect fresh water aquafers. Many times cement is pumped over a productive zone and later perforation guns fire multiple holes through the casing and cement into the formation. When a productive zone is near the bottom of the well, the casing is often run 30 to 40 feet past the porosity in order to provide room to easily complete the well, then cement is pumped through a cement float collar located above the productive zone so that it won’t be covered by cement. Drilling mud prevents cement from going very far past the float collar, instead it is forced to flow up the annulus of the well. The drilling mud will then be removed during the completion work, therefore enabling production to be optimized.
@@jonwelch564 if casing is placed in all sections of the drilled area and somehow sealed to the main up and down pipes then heat can be collected with out fluid loss or contamination but the casing it's self would slow heat transfer. I would guess a plastic liner could be pulled through then pressurized but still a 6 inch Dia bore hole seems really limiting fluid flow and heat collection
This is great, what is their current LCOE (levelized cost of energy)? What is the up-front cost, average oil well is $1-2 mil just to drill and at least in the western US is about 500 -1,500 ft deep?
With the temp. within the Moon's lava tubes reaching around 60°F and the surface temp alternating between roughly 250 °F in the lunar day and -250°F in the lunar night, you could possibly do something like this on the Moon using the right fluid in the pipes. Maybe even air.
Very interesting video. Sounds promising in the quest for clean energy. That a couple big players in the oil and gas industry is investing in it says a lot.
Geothermal is well position to help transition oil and gas workers transition. It is not just great as a stable source of clean power but also could help from an environmental justice perspective :)
I'm concerned that we could sink so much heat that we could cause an accelerated cooling of the Earth and cause environmental issue for future generations.
@@VetforVets LOL, you have no idea how hot and plentiful geothermal energy on the earth is. We're literally on a mostly molten planet with a super thin crust.
@@VetforVets LOL you are literally comparing a very thin layer of gas (our atmosphere) with a very large ball of molten rock (our Earth). Not comparable in the least.
The hot water at the surface boils an organic liquid which drives a vapor turbine that turns a generator to make electricity. Similar to how a solar pond power generator works using an ammonia engine. Ammonia absorbs heat from the hot salty water at the bottom of the pond to drive the ammonia engine.
Great interview! I'm currently looking at all types of grid scale energy storage as bridge-systems for solar and wind. This is an amazing hydrothermal application and design.... love it!
in 1981 in Denmark 2 brothers had the plan for 1,5 km deep hole, to genetate free heat to a small town, they were lawnsued back to the stoneage. tax and oil industry did not wanna play ball
Like so many companies they haven't sensibly looked at their end goal and chose the best solution to produce the same results they want to achieve, Despite how efficient this solution may be it doesn't mean it is the best route to go. There are many off the shelf methods to produce the same results at a much lower cost sustainably that can be setup anywhere without drilling kilometres underground
OMG I had a friend 30 years ago or so that said almost the exact same thing as they are. He said he got got that idea from a book he read. I bet they read the same book. I told my friend go for it and he didn't. Glad they are.
It is a misunderstanding that in Iceland all geothermal power stations use areas were the hot water or steam reaches the surface. The bigger geothermal stations use boreholes around 3 km deep to find steam. Places were you find hot water at 3 to 5 km without any sign on the surface, are rather more common than expected. Icelandic have done work in other countries finding those places and exploit them. Iceland has also done a bit of work on binary power stations. You can run binary cycle down to about 80°C. Geothermal is really underutilized, especially at it can be used as base power 24/7/365. There is also possible to use fracking technology where you have hot dry rock. You drill holes and frack the rock, you pump down water in one hole and get steam up in the other hole.
Very impressed, only the company you keep is worrying. Drop "Fusion", (probably not viable), and use the money for this project asap. All the ancillary technologies like Molten Salt Heat Batteries and Brayton Cycle generators etc, can be applied to this before, and in parallel, with SMR tech. No Nuclear Radiation in your Heat Source is the best Radiation possible, but ships at sea need Nuclear, so far.
Great vid, info & commentary guys, ever since I first heard of this type of tech some years ago now, I believe this could be a real game changer for scalable, renewable power generation. Im surprised there hasn’t been more hype & $ thrown at it. I think the location issues may well fade with better, deeper drilling tech in time. Here in Australia I am sure we have many potentially great locations for Geothermal Power generation, the proof is where we have hot mud springs coming to the surface and Artesian wells/bores drilled all over the place with hot water bore drains running for kms, I believe we have capped most of them for now. There is more heat source power below us than we can use, id be very happy to see governments throw money at this tech, its probly one of our greenest solutions.
This would cut into the profits of certain industries. They do their best to shelf or hide this kind of stuff from the public. Tesla is a good example. His discoveries ruffled feathers.
Excellent. What about combining this with 'fusion' power using heat to create the holes at one twentieth of the cost of drilling while the heat makes the sides of the holes glass-like?
In Alberta where Eavor is located Eavor could build a pilot plant near the tar sands to generate the electricity that the tar sands requires to process oil.
Excellent interview. Fantastic and insightful questions on a very promising new world-changing technology, but... But they never got around to answering your question about the lining of the bores! I'd really like to know. Any chance of a follow-up?
Brilliant! I wish you had asked them about 1) geographic location limitations eg can it be done anywhere or only near young mountains like Alberta? And 2) projected lifetime of projects.
I work in Electricity. It can be done basically anywhere, some regions are just more suitable than others. Also the Rockies are quite old mountains, unlike Iceland.
@@lengould9262 That is moreso due to the location of the faults and the push from the pacific tectonic plate, similar case as LA but their case is less extreme.
She did kind of address that question. The average change in temperature is 20c per km. That is every where. So this can be deployed almost anywhere. I haven’t heard an answer to life span. Perhaps because the tech is evolving. The original bore casing was a type of rock pipe. Sounds like they are trying different things. I would say the heat is for ever and it’s more the lifetime of the “radiator “. 50-100 years. Maybe more.
Watching this again….I’m hungry for more info in this space! (as an old mechanical engineer) - what about doing one of these with a firm that would be considered to be their competitor? (I think there is a similar company named GreenFire??)
I am quite impressed with these guys from my own province. It looks like the whole technology is already in place to allow this kind of new vision about developing geothermal facilities anywhere . On the flip side of my comment; I seem to detect from Jesse some willingness to throw sticks into these guys' wheels in the form of goofy questioning.... like at the 34 min mark. IE Are you gonna hit and anger any ancient Alien civilisation down there? It is fascinating to see these 2 young entrepreneurs come up with very coherent answers despite this childish kind of questioning from Jesse. It seems like he is wanting/hoping to hear the words....We don't know...from Chris and Anna, to at least one of his question.... this is a great segment of your new branch of disruptive investing.
Iceland is so big in geothermal energy, because they recognized the advantages and really started to work on it. Iceland does not have coal, oil or gas and not much sun. So if you want to go for domestic energy, that leaves hydro, geothermal and wind. Today geothermal provides about 65% of primary energy, hydro about 20% and wind is in it's infancy here. That leaves 15% to hydrocarbons, mainly for transport.
One of the advantages of being old is that I remember old stuff. Back in the early seventies there was a TV show where the aliens were drilling a hole with a laser to use core heat for energy. So not exactly a new idea. But an actual question here, Drilling 2+ Km into the crust is an extreamly energy expensive (and ecologically messy) operation. How long do you expect a well to last and what kind of time do you expect to reach payback?
Combine self running generators and power walls in homes and businesses for seemingly endless clean energy everywhere all the time. Have a direct connect to the axle of EVs and solar, to super charge them. No more plugging in or using outside sources except to maintain every great once in a while.
There is a company called Climatengine which is an R&D company which from time to time post on Twitter. From my understanding they have a new heating and cooling system that basically costs nothing to operate, worth you guys tracking them down and having a chat as it sounds incredible.
Wow! These people are awesome! I wonder how much they charge for this setup? And it will be great if they open it to the little investors like myself someday.
It sounds as though these guys should be working with Quaise, who are working on drilling beyond where conventional drilling rigs can reach, using a gyrotron to produce mm-wavelength beams that vaporise the rock. The efficiency of using heat from a 20km deep hole would leave the 2 to 5km deep holes for dead.
I agree but what happens if they spend a lot of money zapping a very deep hole, only to plunder into a magma chamber which shoots magma upward and fills the hole (and potentially destroys the equipment too)? It's a risk but in the end, I think it's worth it.
@@VeryWittyComment Apparently there have been cases of drilling hitting magma, and because the walls of the hole are enough colder than the magma, the magma sets near the bottom of the hole.
If you think it through, every dry well drilled was considered a failure. Applying this approach would turn those wells into a success, regardless of whether or not oil or gas was produced as an outcome.
In the United States, Hawaii immediately comes to mind. Seems you wouldn't have to got as deep without getting too close to the volcanoes as to be dangerous. Just a thought.
an other good reason to test this in Germany is that Germany is midtier geologic active. So it is hard enough to get to the heat that innovation is necessary. But within those regions that don't really do Geothermal because it is to hard it is one of the easiest. Therefore that Region seams to me to be a good testing ground.
It's a everlasting powersource. Whatever the explorationeconomics. Though i think that conventional drilling is out of time. New innovations are needed to.drill deeper, faster, cheaper. I believe in the near future.
Being a service plumber and HVAC tech, this has been an interesting concept. What was the cost of you test system, BTU/H? This still sounds cost prohibitive.
It’s definitely cost prohibitive at the current moment, but with a lot of countries looking to decarbonize I’m sure they’ll be able to find customers willing to pay the price.
Depends where you are. One reason they are starting in Germany is is Electricity is 32cents/kWh. Any islands that use diesel to generate electricity, this is cost effective. That’s really where you want to start anyway.
Natural heat from the Earth is called Eorthermal Heat. No need for water in the rock. The challenge is to recover the heaat in an economic manner, so as to recover the capital costs of the drilling and installation of facilities.
PSA: unless you have a conflict of interest, you are invited to edit Wikipedia articles, add important missing info w/proper references. (Some high-profile articles tend to be limited to established accounts.)
8:14 and following - I think Anna did not quite understand Zac's question, but it was inadvertently answered later by Jesse at 14:30 - that is, it was known that there was this heat underground but in most places it was not enough to simply harness steam and run a turbine - and whereas there were already good enough ways of producing energy from the oil no one bothered to look much further for other options. The innovation is in transferring the heat from the hot water to another liquid and using the gaseous form of that other liquid with a lower boiling point to turn the turbine in a closed loop.
I'll just add that apart from that minor misunderstanding Anna and Christopher did a great job explaining this technology. I've been keeping up with it off and on for over a decade now and am glad to see that this pilot project is working out well and that things are about to move ahead.
These guys should look at Djibouti, where the Earth's crust is so thin that water comes out of the ground at 110°F generally, and boiling hot at certain locations.
Should hv asked how to they connect both the pipes when they are underground and also what about the leakage ? How long these pipes will work until it needs to be replaced again ?
So, the obvious question is do we understand the impact of core heat withdraw on an industrial level? For example, molten iron cooling enough to effect rotational motion thus damaging the magnetisphere.
I have geothermal experience and I cannot imagine a convection hot water loop pumping out 10 MW of power as claimed. I have seen a geothermal bore being tested with that sort of power (not heat) being vented and it is frightening. I think that the surface area in contact with the hot rock is not enough to generate the power, even with transferring the heat to propane. The rock is a very good insulator so the volume around the well cools down and does not recover fast enough to be useful power. It is why we can walk on the surface without burning our feet! I am pouring cold water on this idea because we have already done the thermodynamic calculations.
@@billorcg7779 how many loops then? A million? I cannot understand how they have got this far without doing some basic calculations on heat transfer and power flux.
Hawaii runs 20 binary air cooled machines to produce 30 Mw, or about 1.5 Mw per unit. Even with a multi path “radiator” down there, each tube must be the same length as the others (or different diameters) in order to equalize the flow thru each n be efficient. Water, like people, will always take the path of least resistance.
With plasma drilling tech coming online soon, this is a great time to be alive. The future belongs to people who use 'upspeak', and Anna has it down to a science! She almost did not speak one sentence without upspeaking?? Like the whole thing is a one big question??? But seriously, Eavor is very hot. (Like cool, but in geothermal terms.)
Plasma drilling cannot be used to drill deep wells. First, drilling mud must be pumped at a high pressure down the drill string and ultimately through jets on the drill bit to flush all of those drill cuttings from the bottom and then bring them to the surface. Also, there is way too much groundwater to enable plasma drilling to work. Same reasons for not using lasers.
To Anna and Christopher. From an engineering point of view, you are doing an amazing job. I also think your heart is in the right place, genuinely looking for a clean alternative solution. - Kudos for that. My fear is that in the long run, you will be thrown under the bus by people whose goal is not a better solution for the people but a better solution for their personal profit and power.
I can see it now. The 'green' extremists wanting to shut down the drilling because it is bad for the environment just as they believe fracking is. I'm sure they will try it even though there is no fracking here. The only Eavor borrows from the oil industry is the deep drilling tech. Even then, they are developing some of their own unique technology. Go for it kids! (I call them kids because I'm 77 years old.)
Yes, but they’ll still have to be price competitive with PV + battery, which is getting cheaper all of the time.
@@TheAnticorporatist They probably don't have to exactly meet the LCOE of PV+battery because they are a firm generator. ("firm" means it never stops) They are a clean source of baseload power, which is critical for having an efficient grid.
Only if our representatives got involved and made this a government paid program so that power would be free of charge to the world!!
would that be too much to ask?
Not everything is about price. The low cost of Solar is irrelevant at night. LCOE of geothermal has to be taken into account along with the LCOE of sun and wind energy production because these systems work in tandem. No?
Thank goodness someone is doing this. Geothermal has so much potential. Like the idea of reconfuring all the oilfield jobs.
Could reuse the wells! Just gotta figure out how to plug, flush, and seal them
@@AmandaComeauCreates. Not that easy.
Re: Closed Cycle Geothermal. I first saw this presented at UCLA 50 years back. Some of the problems then were drilling equipment unable to tolerate temperatures at those depths, as well for heat exchangers, & control precision to locate & maintain such equipment at those depths & highly adverse conditions. Finally, plus a great investment opportunity!
ruclips.net/video/gV92QFDb5qQ/видео.html
Yeah.... New jobs for old fields and you generate continuous employment for decades at least.
@@tmgasiathe old fields will generate and grow new oil over time
That's awesome there's young people left that are using the brains that's givin to them to help the world instead of some woke ideologies! Hats off to Eavor
This is great. I read about this concept a decade ago. I am glad to see a company implementing this idea.
Whenever big oil wants in on a renewable start up, you can pretty much forget about it. But i am amazed at how well it worked, the thermal current running for years as well as the ability to change output and even store up thermal capacity is awesome.
Big oil has been known to suppress new technologies so they can keep a stranglehold on the energy sector.
In the 1960s, New Zealand built its first Geothermal power station in Taupo (central North Island). Our family moved there and Dad worked on the first two bores and the station itself as a carpenter. The science was so new that we were the first, Government funded and built, full scale base load generation plant in the world. To see the fields today is fascinating, the hundreds of kilometers of pipes cover many square km of farmland. I would love to see this new tech in other parts of less Geothermal activity, here in NZ.
Thanks to all of you for a very interesting show.
The world's first commercial geothermal power station was built in Italy in like 1911.
Been subscribed for a long time, thanks for asking ‘dumb’ questions so the rest of us don’t have to 😂 This looks really promising, a great way to handle some of the baseload without needing the sun to shine or the wind to blow!!
you weren't joking about the dumb part.
I've been following Eavor for a couple years. IMO, they need to adopt plasma drilling technology which is hopefully coming on-line soon. This will significantly reduce the cost of drilling to even greater depths than Eavor is currently doing and make their energy production truly the lowest LCOE (levelized cost of energy). Hope that Europe can adopt this technology as fast as possible so that Putin can be made redundant and everyone can enjoy clearer air at the same time. Exciting times.
Agree re the European situation.
In the UK we have the Government suggesting fracking as a solution to Putin.
This would be a great fast fix.
They don't even need to go very deep. 50C return water would be plenty warm enough for heating. Winter heating is one of the greatest uses of energy in Europe.
Is there any risk of fracturing the bedrock and creating earthquakes or other geological problems?
@@privatemale27 it makes you wonder, after the heat has been used to create electricity, could the hot water be pumped to the surrounding area to heat homes before being sent back down the well.
@@jonwelch564 That is pretty common in other geothermal installations. They don't need to use the same water either. They can use a heat exchanger to heat treated city water.
Nice to see old school tech coming back around.
Those first hot water radiators heating buildings and apartments in say New York relied on closed loop convection to circulate water back to the boiler. Just using geothermal to replace the coal and heating oil and using the heat to generate electricity. All off the shelf technology combined in a novel system, good on you.
A little over 50 years ago, I lived in an apartment that was heated with that type system. It was nice and warm in winter even if the electricity went off.
@danielhanawalt4998 That is fascinating . Where was this ?
@@aptorres01 I first saw them in an episode of This Old House long ago.
I wish these folks the best in their endeavor. This is incredibly promising!
hah. end-eavor
The next step is to investigate Quaise Energy and AltaRock. Quaise is commercializing a drill bit that melts its way through basement rock and leaves a glass lining behind that obviates need to install a casing (50% of drilling cost). They hope to be able to drill 20km holes and get 450-500C temp. AltaRock in Seattle will use their technology to drill the first hole in Oregon.
Some years ago I worked in the 'oil patch'. I must agree the ability to drill precisely was amazing back then, and today I only assume it is more so. ... On of my employers was Amoco, before purchased by BP, in exploration 20Million was a typical exploration well, so 100Million is not that much money considering they put billions into exploration annually. When I was working the Exploration would find a revisor, guess as to its size then sell it to the 'production' company that would put in many well in a field and operate and produce it for many years. Eventually most fields get sold to secondary production companies (smaller oil companies).. Oh the production company typically sells the oil to their own or others refineries who the sell the refined products to wholesalers or retailers. Every step along the way each company was normally required to make their own 'profit', so the true level of profit in these companies was often obfuscated, IMHO.
Stationed at Naval Air Station (NAS) Keflavik in 1979-80. The geothermal power plant extracted hot brine water and used heat exchangers to heat the fluid that flashed to steam to run turbines that produced electricity. Additionally the fluid was used to heat water for the heating district. So the NATO base got electricity and hot water to heat all the buildings. Finally, the plant dumped excess brine water into the lava field. That waste water was the origin of the Blue Lagoon which back then was an undeveloped pond with some stairs so that you could get in and out without slicing your feet up.
PS - Hopefully, if there is an eruption, the new lava flow won’t destroy the plant!
Love the concept. The question I would have pursued would have been their ability to overcome the heat degradation on the drilling equipment. I believe that has been the limiting factor on how deep we can drill
Is it breakthroughs in material science that will allow them to overcome that.
Standard drilling equipment like the drill bit and the pipe used to rotate it can handle temperatures (1600+ degrees F) way above what their target temps are. When you start getting into directional drilling tools, downhole motors to spin the bit without spinning the pipe, and their tools used to intersect the two boreholes, those are the items that really don't have very high temperature ratings due to the moving parts, electronics, and rubber seals (probably 300 to 400 degrees F or 150 to 200 degrees C). Any technology they have for hotter temps than those they will have to develop if they haven't already. Mostly that means developing non-rubber seals and making sure the materials used in tight tolerance applications have similar coefficients of thermal expansion. Also developing electronics that are either non-silicon based or are encased in some type of dewar flask style insulation.
@@kevinstone7723 thanks for the info!! Very succinctly put.
They are so past that. They don’t utilize drills in the deep digging- they use plasma.
Anna is amazing! If she ever comes to Oregon, I sure wouldn't mind a visit! Even just to talk about geothermal gradients.....
Great ideas, great guests. Well explained... very cool!
I’m glad they were able to help elucidate some awesome tech we have in the drilling industry. Great job explaining it to them.
I love Eavor!
Great programme pitched at just the right level for the interested layman like me.
Thermosiphons are old technology. The Model T Ford used that method to cool its engine with no water pump at all. The radiator does have forced air from the engine through its fan, and the temperature difference alone is sufficient to cause the water to circulate. Look at old trucks and other cars from that era and you will see the radiator is mounted quite high compared to cars with water pumps. Cars from my childhood also tended to have thermosiphon effects even when there was a water pump. Like the hole in the bumper under the radiator for a crank to start the car if the electric starter failed, cars were made with redundancy to continue working back then. Today if the computer dies so does the modern car.
A Model T probably couldn't produce much heat, so a heat syphon might have been sufficientl. Old cars used to boil over when I was a kid, I don't have that kind of a problem now days.
My work van has just had it's first problem at 87,000 miles, the exhaust injector has just failed causing it to go into limp mode (not a real issue, but Ford want you to get it fixed). Old cars cant compete because modern technology beats it hands down.
Wow! That’s what Kryon mentioned several years ago. That’s cool. Clean not like burning coal or nuclear..Way to go Good guys 👍👍👍❤️
Imagine a porous rock, like a sponge. There are a lot of down hole tools. When I was designing tools for Schlumberger the limit was 200c and approx. 25,000 ft. Good job.
Yes! Closed loop Rankine cycle with lower quality heat. Low boiling point fluid in a closed loop driving a high pressure turbine. Very little maintenance, no emissions, no water usage, can be done anywhere, and at much lower depths. Makes perfect sense!
I was very interested in the casing/lining of the wells question but the answer focused on something else, unfortunately. I am so excited for this tech and the rest of the Geothermal ventures, I wish them the best of luck!!
I assume they would pump a grout in to seal the holes in the rock.
@@jonwelch564 except wanting to line the well not plug it since if the drill a 6 inch hole a half inch lining cuts the flow to 25/36 of the volume and a one inch lining would cut the flow to 16/36 of the drilled 6 inch hole. Interestingly the larger the diameter the easier fluid flow but relatively less surface to volume so it does not warm as fast
@@jeffbybee5207 guessing, would the grout seep into the porous rock and not block the hole? I don't know, just thinking out loud.
After a well has been drilled, open-hole wireline logs are run to identify productive formations. These logs accurately indicate the borehole caliper, minerals, porosity and types of fluid present in each formation. Another wireline tool can then be run to measure the permeability and retrieve samples of the fluid. In productive intervals with low permeability and containing high viscosity fluids, downhole reamers are often used to enlarge the original borehole. Doing this increases the productive capability of an interval and minimizes production damage to the borehole. These reamers have extendable arms lined with PDC cutters that fold downward along the sides of the tool. It is placed in the BHA (bottom hole assembly) and is designed to pass through the previously drilled borehole. When it reaches the desired reaming depth, mud pumps provide the hydraulic pressure necessary to force these arms outward and make contact with the borehole while the drill string is being rotated and moved up and down. This procedure continues until a larger borehole has been created in each zone of interest. The arms on these reamers are pulled back onto the tool when the pump pressure drops, thus allowing it to be moved to ream another interval or brought back out.
Centralizers are attached to casing as it is being run down the well to assure the casing will be held away from the borehole in the areas that will be cemented. This is to assure cement will be able to bond with the casing in order to seal the annulus of the well. A cement float shoe and sometimes float collars are placed in the string of casing as it is being run in order to control where cement will be pumped into the annulus of the well. After all of the casing has been run, a calculated amount of a customized cement blend is pumped down the casing, followed by a measured amount of water sufficient to displace it in the casing, thus forcing the cement into the annulus of the well. The string of casing is hung from the derrick of the drilling rig and isn’t moved until the cement has harden, and then a wireline bond log is run to confirm it has bonded with the casing. If not, then a cement squeeze may be necessary to assure the well has been completely sealed between the borehole and casing. This is extremely important to protect fresh water aquafers.
Many times cement is pumped over a productive zone and later perforation guns fire multiple holes through the casing and cement into the formation. When a productive zone is near the bottom of the well, the casing is often run 30 to 40 feet past the porosity in order to provide room to easily complete the well, then cement is pumped through a cement float collar located above the productive zone so that it won’t be covered by cement. Drilling mud prevents cement from going very far past the float collar, instead it is forced to flow up the annulus of the well. The drilling mud will then be removed during the completion work, therefore enabling production to be optimized.
@@jonwelch564 if casing is placed in all sections of the drilled area and somehow sealed to the main up and down pipes then heat can be collected with out fluid loss or contamination but the casing it's self would slow heat transfer. I would guess a plastic liner could be pulled through then pressurized but still a 6 inch Dia bore hole seems really limiting fluid flow and heat collection
Closed loop liquid cpu coolers (the ones without pump) have been working by thermal siphoning for years - this is it scaled up😀 nice!
The world is amazing.
This is great, what is their current LCOE (levelized cost of energy)? What is the up-front cost, average oil well is $1-2 mil just to drill and at least in the western US is about 500 -1,500 ft deep?
Great questions both for the technical and the laypeople alike!
With the temp. within the Moon's lava tubes reaching around 60°F and the surface temp alternating between roughly 250 °F in the lunar day and -250°F in the lunar night, you could possibly do something like this on the Moon using the right fluid in the pipes. Maybe even air.
Very interesting video. Sounds promising in the quest for clean energy. That a couple big players in the oil and gas industry is investing in it says a lot.
Geothermal is well position to help transition oil and gas workers transition. It is not just great as a stable source of clean power but also could help from an environmental justice perspective :)
I'm concerned that we could sink so much heat that we could cause an accelerated cooling of the Earth and cause environmental issue for future generations.
@@VetforVets LOL, you have no idea how hot and plentiful geothermal energy on the earth is. We're literally on a mostly molten planet with a super thin crust.
@@gurumage9555 Who would of ever thought that Cow Stinkers would ever contribute to the Green House Gas problem. Never say "never" my friend.
@@VetforVets LOL you are literally comparing a very thin layer of gas (our atmosphere) with a very large ball of molten rock (our Earth). Not comparable in the least.
The hot water at the surface boils an organic liquid which drives a vapor turbine that turns a generator to make electricity. Similar to how a solar pond power generator works using an ammonia engine. Ammonia absorbs heat from the hot salty water at the bottom of the pond to drive the ammonia engine.
Great interview! I'm currently looking at all types of grid scale energy storage as bridge-systems for solar and wind. This is an amazing hydrothermal application and design.... love it!
in 1981 in Denmark 2 brothers had the plan for 1,5 km deep hole, to genetate free heat to a small town, they were lawnsued back to the stoneage. tax and oil industry did not wanna play ball
Like so many companies they haven't sensibly looked at their end goal and chose the best solution to produce the same results they want to achieve, Despite how efficient this solution may be it doesn't mean it is the best route to go. There are many off the shelf methods to produce the same results at a much lower cost sustainably that can be setup anywhere without drilling kilometres underground
Thermosiphon effect....NOICE!
Seems like a viable addition to decarbonisation, the team seem very competent and realistic I wish them well. Pun intended 😂
OMG I had a friend 30 years ago or so that said almost the exact same thing as they are. He said he got got that idea from a book he read. I bet they read the same book. I told my friend go for it and he didn't. Glad they are.
Thx. for the video. I liked the way you guys framed questions so that a lay man like me could understand it. Because i had the same questions too.
Best line in the interview was “Geothermal really doesn’t have global penetration.” Well, drill those holes and let’s penetrate the globe.
This is one reason I’m a Patron!
Does this use that new microwave drilling technique which also fuses the surrounding rock?
canada has some smart people who are bringing leading technologies to the world ..
It is a misunderstanding that in Iceland all geothermal power stations use areas were the hot water or steam reaches the surface. The bigger geothermal stations use boreholes around 3 km deep to find steam. Places were you find hot water at 3 to 5 km without any sign on the surface, are rather more common than expected. Icelandic have done work in other countries finding those places and exploit them. Iceland has also done a bit of work on binary power stations. You can run binary cycle down to about 80°C.
Geothermal is really underutilized, especially at it can be used as base power 24/7/365.
There is also possible to use fracking technology where you have hot dry rock. You drill holes and frack the rock, you pump down water in one hole and get steam up in the other hole.
Very impressed, only the company you keep is worrying.
Drop "Fusion", (probably not viable), and use the money for this project asap. All the ancillary technologies like Molten Salt Heat Batteries and Brayton Cycle generators etc, can be applied to this before, and in parallel, with SMR tech. No Nuclear Radiation in your Heat Source is the best Radiation possible, but ships at sea need Nuclear, so far.
Great vid, info & commentary guys, ever since I first heard of this type of tech some years ago now, I believe this could be a real game changer for scalable, renewable power generation. Im surprised there hasn’t been more hype & $ thrown at it. I think the location issues may well fade with better, deeper drilling tech in time.
Here in Australia I am sure we have many potentially great locations for Geothermal Power generation, the proof is where we have hot mud springs coming to the surface and Artesian wells/bores drilled all over the place with hot water bore drains running for kms, I believe we have capped most of them for now. There is more heat source power below us than we can use, id be very happy to see governments throw money at this tech, its probly one of our greenest solutions.
Wiki has quite a good article on Australia... en.wikipedia.org /wiki/ Geothermal_power_in_Australia
This would cut into the profits of certain industries. They do their best to shelf or hide this kind of stuff from the public. Tesla is a good example. His discoveries ruffled feathers.
Excellent. What about combining this with 'fusion' power using heat to create the holes at one twentieth of the cost of drilling while the heat makes the sides of the holes glass-like?
In Alberta where Eavor is located Eavor could build a pilot plant near the tar sands to generate the electricity that the tar sands requires to process oil.
goodness my grandchildren need to learn this in north Texas
Excellent interview. Fantastic and insightful questions on a very promising new world-changing technology, but...
But they never got around to answering your question about the lining of the bores! I'd really like to know. Any chance of a follow-up?
Nice Canadian company!
Question is : how delicate will these holes be? Does the space need to be totally free of earthquakes/tremors?
Anywhere that can be drilled for oil or gas can be drilled for heat. stability helps but isnt needed, there are ways to mitigate that.
Brilliant! I wish you had asked them about 1) geographic location limitations eg can it be done anywhere or only near young mountains like Alberta? And 2) projected lifetime of projects.
Geothermal is available anywhere regardless of location. some areas are closer to hot rock. ruclips.net/video/PtQmGPmyLA0/видео.html
I work in Electricity. It can be done basically anywhere, some regions are just more suitable than others. Also the Rockies are quite old mountains, unlike Iceland.
@@hightechredneck8587 Thing is, there's lots of hot springs in the Rockies of Canada, so crust is much thinner than eg great lakes area.
@@lengould9262 That is moreso due to the location of the faults and the push from the pacific tectonic plate, similar case as LA but their case is less extreme.
She did kind of address that question. The average change in temperature is 20c per km. That is every where. So this can be deployed almost anywhere. I haven’t heard an answer to life span. Perhaps because the tech is evolving. The original bore casing was a type of rock pipe. Sounds like they are trying different things. I would say the heat is for ever and it’s more the lifetime of the “radiator “. 50-100 years. Maybe more.
Watching this again….I’m hungry for more info in this space! (as an old mechanical engineer) - what about doing one of these with a firm that would be considered to be their competitor? (I think there is a similar company named GreenFire??)
I am quite impressed with these guys from my own province. It looks like the whole technology is already in place to allow this kind of new vision about developing geothermal facilities anywhere .
On the flip side of my comment; I seem to detect from Jesse some willingness to throw sticks into these guys' wheels in the form of goofy questioning.... like at the 34 min mark. IE Are you gonna hit and anger any ancient Alien civilisation down there?
It is fascinating to see these 2 young entrepreneurs come up with very coherent answers despite this childish kind of questioning from Jesse. It seems like he is wanting/hoping to hear the words....We don't know...from Chris and Anna, to at least one of his question.... this is a great segment of your new branch of disruptive investing.
Putin : HAHA! Now you Europeans will freeze in winter without Russian gas!
Eavor Tech : Hold my beer.
The only question you did not ask, might be the only one that counts. How much will electricity cost, $0.? Per KwH?
Brilliant energy tech, bring it on!
Iceland is so big in geothermal energy, because they recognized the advantages and really started to work on it. Iceland does not have coal, oil or gas and not much sun. So if you want to go for domestic energy, that leaves hydro, geothermal and wind. Today geothermal provides about 65% of primary energy, hydro about 20% and wind is in it's infancy here. That leaves 15% to hydrocarbons, mainly for transport.
Great Video, and well presented.
One of the advantages of being old is that I remember old stuff. Back in the early seventies there was a TV show where the aliens were drilling a hole with a laser to use core heat for energy. So not exactly a new idea.
But an actual question here, Drilling 2+ Km into the crust is an extreamly energy expensive (and ecologically messy) operation. How long do you expect a well to last and what kind of time do you expect to reach payback?
Combine self running generators and power walls in homes and businesses for seemingly endless clean energy everywhere all the time. Have a direct connect to the axle of EVs and solar, to super charge them. No more plugging in or using outside sources except to maintain every great once in a while.
There is a company called Climatengine which is an R&D company which from time to time post on Twitter. From my understanding they have a new heating and cooling system that basically costs nothing to operate, worth you guys tracking them down and having a chat as it sounds incredible.
What would be the cost per KWH?
I believe it is currently about 20milion to produce 2mw
Wow! These people are awesome! I wonder how much they charge for this setup? And it will be great if they open it to the little investors like myself someday.
not sure it will work but they do ask most of the important questions
curious how are they dealing with salts and corrosion
What is the cost of drilling and installing this system?
It sounds as though these guys should be working with Quaise, who are working on drilling beyond where conventional drilling rigs can reach, using a gyrotron to produce mm-wavelength beams that vaporise the rock. The efficiency of using heat from a 20km deep hole would leave the 2 to 5km deep holes for dead.
I agree but what happens if they spend a lot of money zapping a very deep hole, only to plunder into a magma chamber which shoots magma upward and fills the hole (and potentially destroys the equipment too)? It's a risk but in the end, I think it's worth it.
@@VeryWittyComment Apparently there have been cases of drilling hitting magma, and because the walls of the hole are enough colder than the magma, the magma sets near the bottom of the hole.
That's good news. Hopefully mm waves can be used in the very near future to dig super deep!
Now there are two real amazing human beings indeed
Combined with other renewable and heat pumps etc to increase temperature and then storing in a sand battery would be awesome
Some of the companies are using Ammonia instead of water because it boils at a lower temp. No battery required as the earth is a thermal battery.
If you think it through, every dry well drilled was considered a failure. Applying this approach would turn those wells into a success, regardless of whether or not oil or gas was produced as an outcome.
Amazing well done guys keep it up
Thing two: You HAVE to talk to Quase Energy. Similar but also VERY VERY different! And much more innovation (so more risk).
Good luck Eavor!
In the United States, Hawaii immediately comes to mind. Seems you wouldn't have to got as deep without getting too close to the volcanoes as to be dangerous. Just a thought.
an other good reason to test this in Germany is that Germany is midtier geologic active. So it is hard enough to get to the heat that innovation is necessary. But within those regions that don't really do Geothermal because it is to hard it is one of the easiest. Therefore that Region seams to me to be a good testing ground.
Hope these guys are well lawyered up against Big Oils’ attempts to push them aside after all the REAL work’s been done!
It's a everlasting powersource. Whatever the explorationeconomics. Though i think that conventional drilling is out of time. New innovations are needed to.drill deeper, faster, cheaper. I believe in the near future.
It was really Great to listen from Calgary Alberta about this company from Calgary Alberta. I never liked Oil & Gas.
Being a service plumber and HVAC tech, this has been an interesting concept.
What was the cost of you test system,
BTU/H?
This still sounds cost prohibitive.
It’s definitely cost prohibitive at the current moment, but with a lot of countries looking to decarbonize I’m sure they’ll be able to find customers willing to pay the price.
Not as costly as the consequences of failing to decarbonize our energy production as a species.
Depends where you are. One reason they are starting in Germany is is Electricity is 32cents/kWh. Any islands that use diesel to generate electricity, this is cost effective. That’s really where you want to start anyway.
Natural heat from the Earth is called Eorthermal Heat. No need for water in the rock. The challenge is to recover the heaat in an economic manner, so as to recover the capital costs of the drilling and installation of facilities.
Awesome!
Take a look at GA Drilling and Quaise Energy.
PSA: unless you have a conflict of interest, you are invited to edit Wikipedia articles, add important missing info w/proper references. (Some high-profile articles tend to be limited to established accounts.)
Interesting, Thank You . I hope it works ,can be scaled and made practical
8:14 and following - I think Anna did not quite understand Zac's question, but it was inadvertently answered later by Jesse at 14:30 - that is, it was known that there was this heat underground but in most places it was not enough to simply harness steam and run a turbine - and whereas there were already good enough ways of producing energy from the oil no one bothered to look much further for other options. The innovation is in transferring the heat from the hot water to another liquid and using the gaseous form of that other liquid with a lower boiling point to turn the turbine in a closed loop.
I'll just add that apart from that minor misunderstanding Anna and Christopher did a great job explaining this technology. I've been keeping up with it off and on for over a decade now and am glad to see that this pilot project is working out well and that things are about to move ahead.
These guys should look at Djibouti, where the Earth's crust is so thin that water comes out of the ground at 110°F generally, and boiling hot at certain locations.
These guys are down right annoying but the people their interviewing are really intelligent and interesting
I have several question:
How is the spoil removed? Is this done by pressurized fluid?
Question : How works this drills during Earthquakes ??? How is working those drills for oil/gas !?
Should hv asked how to they connect both the pipes when they are underground and also what about the leakage ? How long these pipes will work until it needs to be replaced again ?
So, the obvious question is do we understand the impact of core heat withdraw on an industrial level? For example, molten iron cooling enough to effect rotational motion thus damaging the magnetisphere.
How is that going to be managed, repaired and replaced? And at what cost? Is that feasible for a home or better for a neighborhood?
Great idea 🤠
From Alberta
Keep up the good work
INTERESTING :)
THANK YOU FOR SHARING :)
THANK YOU FROM ISRAEL :)
Brilliant and fascinating! Thanks
I have geothermal experience and I cannot imagine a convection hot water loop pumping out 10 MW of power as claimed. I have seen a geothermal bore being tested with that sort of power (not heat) being vented and it is frightening. I think that the surface area in contact with the hot rock is not enough to generate the power, even with transferring the heat to propane. The rock is a very good insulator so the volume around the well cools down and does not recover fast enough to be useful power. It is why we can walk on the surface without burning our feet! I am pouring cold water on this idea because we have already done the thermodynamic calculations.
I don’t think a single loop will generate 10 MW. Probably they will have multiple loops for higher power levels.
@@billorcg7779 how many loops then? A million? I cannot understand how they have got this far without doing some basic calculations on heat transfer and power flux.
Hawaii runs 20 binary air cooled machines to produce 30 Mw, or about 1.5 Mw per unit.
Even with a multi path “radiator” down there, each tube must be the same length as the others (or different diameters) in order to equalize the flow thru each n be efficient. Water, like people, will always take the path of least resistance.
Very interesting thank you very much. M
This was so informative.
With plasma drilling tech coming online soon, this is a great time to be alive. The future belongs to people who use 'upspeak', and Anna has it down to a science! She almost did not speak one sentence without upspeaking?? Like the whole thing is a one big question??? But seriously, Eavor is very hot. (Like cool, but in geothermal terms.)
Plasma drilling cannot be used to drill deep wells. First, drilling mud must be pumped at a high pressure down the drill string and ultimately through jets on the drill bit to flush all of those drill cuttings from the bottom and then bring them to the surface. Also, there is way too much groundwater to enable plasma drilling to work. Same reasons for not using lasers.
Dave / Just Have a Think video got me interested in Eavor geothermal
I am very interested in island economies, particularly in the Pacific. Saipan? Guam? Okinawa?