Iceland's Geothermal Bailout

I enjoyed this piece; it's informative and well written. I hope the project works out.

"If it exploited the island's full reserves in only the conventional way, it could produce 20 terawatt-hours of electricity per year" Big applauds for getting units right. It's so rare this days :)

"would be like switching from diesel to jet fuel" - This is about like switching from tap water to bottled. I would think that there would be an energy difference to illustrate here, and a reduction in purity.

The real big news in geothermal power is in exploiting ocean floor vents. Instead of drilling two miles, you can just install a pipe to feed a plant that dwarfs existing nukes. www.marshallsystem.com/

Bob Stuart

We can change anything.
But we can never change
just one thing.

Geothermal Power gives us great opportunities. Combined with some wind, some solar and some marine energy, like the Anaconda,it seems the right way to go.

http://tinyurl.com/ngsgat

@BobStuart
That looks rocking. Are there projects working already?
If not, why??

Going the write about it on my Blog

Milieunet Foundation is a non-profit organisation focused on awareness and change of behaviour by means of communication about waste, energy, sustainability, nature, environment, climate, human rights and international development cooperation.

Geez, this is a profoundly ignorant article. He completely misunderstands the nature of the HCl reactivity, assuming that is important, and implies some magical property to supercritical water which doesn't exist. The fact that the water is supercritical means exactly zero. The only reason it can supply energy is because it's at high T and high p, and that's it. Doesn't matter whether it's liquid, gas, supercritical, or anything else under the Sun.

I had to laugh at the ignorance on display in the comment that supercritical water was useful because it kept the "high-energy" H-bonding network intact. Gee, in that case, you'd expect plain water at 100C ("high energy" H-bonding network intact!) would give you more energy than steam at 100C. Which, of course, as anyone who's had the bad luck to come into contact with live steam can tell you, just ain't so. This guy could usefully look up the Wikipedia entry on "heat of vaporization."

But beyond that, he implies that somehow Iceland's experience drilling a hole in a volcano could somehow be a miracle for global energy needs. What kind of cluelessness is this? He's forgotten that geothermal power requires a very special set of circumstances, namely an active volcanic region with lots of water? Or does he think that people have bizarrely failed to map each and every one of those potential power sources over the past century or so? And that to the extent any of them are economically exploitable, they already are exploited?

I mean, next he's going to write a breathless article explaining how some ingenious person in country X has discovered that if you put a waterwheel in a swift-flowing stream, you can use it to generate power. Amazing! Who'd have thought? Imagine the possibilities! Feh.

I have to agree to some extent with Carl Pham's comments. The subject matter is quite interesting, but the technical details are in many cases inaccurate. I think "peer-to-peer" review was abandoned regarding this article. Someone mentioned "diesel to jet fuel", for example, a comparison of nearly 1 = 1.

And correction on the comments regarding power plants employing supercritical fluid technology. There are quite a few fossil fueled central stations employing supercritical technology in the US and a growing number in countries like China for example. The latter are all fossil fueled units, as well.

There are no nuclear units employing supercritical pressure/temperature conditions, period. In fact, the nuclear units generally operate at around 33% of critical presssure at around 1000 psi.

Geothermal energy (steam) used directly is difficult from a corrosion standpoint. In this example, a primary heat exchanger provides an interface between the thermal fluid and the steam side much like the configuration used in a pressurized water nuclear reactor. The corrosive elements that undoubtedly (in my view) will be present would be isolated from the steam cycle. I give these people a lot of credit for their efforts, but I wouldn't want to be anywhere near this site when it comes time to hook into that superhot, superhigh pressure source of around 700 degrees F and 3200 PSIA. This is an artisan well to exponential scale.

Good thing there is no EPA in Iceland. I'm sure they would never have gotten a permit to build something like this in the US (might disturb some Snaildarter or other obscure creature that no one cares about except some liberal tree-hugger).