In Australia we have this energy freely available in a town called Portland which is in Victoria but the authorities closed it down, it supplied thermal energy to the hospital and heated the local swimming pool. Greed at the top end stopped us using it. Power companies must do favours for the rats that are in power.
Thanks for the comment. I have always been misanthropic and distrusting of humans. They're awful creatures and it's obvious that humanity as a functioning unit is a failed experiment.This is an absolutely PERFECT example (one of many, I'm afraid) of homo sapiens failing at humanity.
NZ also had free energy to homes in parts of Rotorua but the City fathers determined that they wanted the thermal Attractions to get maximum benefits from their geothermal resources and cut private wells back and maybe even stopped people having free hot water and warm swimming pools .
@@chrisbraid2907 We have a large geothermal plant very near me here in Northern California, but the energy derived from it certainly isn't free.....it's anything but free! Fortunately, with the advent of NESARA/GESARA, we may finally see actual free energy, and all throughout the world. Peace!
as someone who has spent most of the last 18 years on oil rigs, as a geologist, and later an engineer, I can say that the process to drill deep geothermal wells is not really any different to conventional oil and gas drilling. We have the technology to drill very deeply already, we don't need this new plasma method that will use an incredible amount of electricity. Just because some technology exists, doesnt mean it's going to be affordable, or applicable. Geodynamics, a company in Australia already built a proof of concept for enhanced geothermal, or hot dry rock geothermal (look for Geodynamics Habanero project). They drilled multiple wells to only 4-5km deep, and circulated water between wells, generating steam, and electricity. One major economic hurdle was affordable corrosion control, not the technology to drill the wells. Conceptually, it's awesome, no need to burn fossil fuels, etc, but the reality is that there is no point building an amazing system if you cannot maintain the equipment and sell the end product at an affordable price.
Yeah. There’s some crap here hey… ‘attempts have been made to drill into the Earths core’.. Er.. no they haven’t. Touching the mantle would be hard enough. As you say, HTHP drilling is already done, but it’s not simple. There are many challenges and risks to it. I’ve drilled 120+ oil & gas wells. My mind boggles when anyone suggests drilling down to the upper mantle would be a simple affair even with any new tech. Note also that the Eden Project geothermal well referenced here has had drilling stopped because it caused felt seismicity locally - though geothermal is currently allowed to make around 3000x the seismic energy that was set by the U.K. regulators for shale gas etc. Either way, very deep drilling is no easy thing. As you say, it’s all about the economics.
i think you're missing on that as themperature get higher, they spend more money changing the drill bits, they don't last long and it makes drilling more expensive, so expensive that it reduce the ROI
@@zazugee Heat isn't that much of an issue for PDC bits and diamond impregnated bits, but it is for roller-cone bits as they have bearings. You are right though, actual drilling time is only a relatively small proportion of time spent on well construction, with each extra unplanned trip eating up the budget.
If I remember the Kola Superdeep Borehole history correctly, one of the main reasons they stopped it (beyond lacking money) was because at the depth they were at, the rock was almost like drilling through soft plastic. The drill didn't so much bite as "stir" the rock, and extraction of the drilled rock was made very difficult. That, and the well sides weren't very stable, collapsing around the drill head and string. They also kept having "mishaps" where sections of the drill string would break and they would have to abandon that current hole and start again above where the break occurred, probably due to the issues with the temperatures and the plasticity problems with the rocks at that depth.
If I remember correctly, the plasma drilling process claims to solve this. It's supposed to change the composition of the walls of the hole so it stays solid. Obviously it's impossible to know how it would work in practice until/unless there's a full sized demonstration, though.
A huge issue is the shear weight of the equipment hanging in the hole and that drill bits use this pressure on the bit to push as they drill. Maybe the plasma drilling can solve that, but we will see.
prove it or be removed from the internet for ever with digital ID, and i don't mean paraphrasing it. Prove you can reproduce what you're saying, because as of now with all the evidence we do have you're either a liar like the guy above you or a moron
If I may, all oil and gas wells on Earth can actually be converted into Geothermal power plants for electricity and district heating/cooling. There are many abandoned oil/gas wells (including coal mines) that can be used for such a purpose... and oil rigs in the North sea are especially usable because the geothermal gradient there is far higher (aka, hotter temperatures at shallower depths of bore holes which automatically provide high enough temps for electricitiy and heating production [combined]). Additionally, A LOT of the said oil/gas wells already reach down 6 to 12 km... which are deep enough for electricity production. The Geothermal facility which was newly constructed in Cornwall UK was said it will produce about 3 MW of electricity and 12 MW of heating/cooling - and this is with a well of about 4.5km depth - which is not bad, but its also shallower than many oil/gas wells). It was also said that converting oil/gas wells to geothermal would cost HALF as much vs what it would cost to decomission them - and heck, why not? The infrastructure is already there. Plus, all of the equipment, people and their skills are DIRECTLY transferrable to Geothermal sector. While it is also accurate that for new geothermal power facilities the drilling costs are what account for 30-50% of the costs, what most people fail to realize is that utility scale geothermal power plants tend to pay for themselves in up to 10 years time (typically around 7 years maximum), after that, they are virtually free to run. They also have no running fuel costs, have reliability and efficiency ratios of 90-100%, and levelized cost of Geothermal has been holding steady for over a decade now at $70 per MWh (whereas most running costs of Geothermal are between $14-$36 per MWh). Essentially, Geothermal has all advantages of Nuclear, but none of its drawbacks (such as high running operational costs and production of nuclear waste - even new SMR's are ridiculously inefficient and will be producing 2-30 times more volume of nuclear waste than existing nuclear power plants - and their levelized costs are projected to rise exponentially in the coming decade - plus, standard operational costs of Nuclear are $156 per MWh - over DOUBLE of Geothermal). Also, when properly maintained, Geothermal power plants can last over 100 years (as is evidenced by the Geothermal facility in Italy/Larderrelo)... and Geothermal brines tend to contain vast quantities of Lithium and other mineral resources. It was said that the handful (about five or eight) of Geothermal plants in USA alone can provide the entire nation with many times more Lithium that it would ever know what to do with (and if we factor in other mineral resources in the brines, the payoff of the geothermal facility can be much faster than what I said above - similar ratios are for the Geothermal facility in Cornwall). So, technically speaking, there is no need to make new wells because we have a vast amount of unused oil/gas infrastructure (even used ones) which can already be converted to Geothermal for both electricity and heating/cooling purposes. But, I agree that Quaise' efforts at drilling 20km into the Earth would provide for much higher temperatures... but in that case, I would imagine that 20 km depth would provide for much higher temperatures than 400 degrees Celsius. At any rate, the biggest problem plaguing Geothermal are not higher costs of drilling or our ability to access Geothermal resources for sustainable electricity and heating/cooling... its BIGGEST problem is LACK OF FUNDING. Compared to any other energy source on Earth, Geothermal is the LEAST funded energy source on the planet. And when we factor in how much money is given in subsidies to fossil fuels... you can tell that governments and corporation priorities do NOT lie where they should be. Already, back in 2006, MIT released a study saying that we already had the technology at the time to access enough geothermal power to sustain Human civilisation for 200 years worth of... and that with improved technologies we can access enough Geothermal to sustain us for 2000 years. The oil and gas industry has been digging deep bore holes ranging from 6-12 km depth for 100 years now... its not an issue of accessing Geothermal... the issue is lack of funding and willingness to shift our attention to Geothermal.
You think too logically and straight forward. The reason why intelligent people like yourself are not allowed to design and build these machines is because it cripple the oil industry and radicalize what people thought about government, society, the capabilities and purpose of the human race. Progress will be denied.
Most of them are not hot enough. E.g. if the bottom of the mine is 60 C, it's far too low to generate electricity (will cost too much per generated watt).
@@denysvlasenko1865 The shallower wells can still be used for district heating/cooling. Works just the same. The deeper wells (ones which go down 5-6km) would be hot enough to produce electricity (in Iceland, they usually dig about 5-6km deep wells and then connect a whole bunch of them together into a single geothermal facility). Either way, its doable. Shallower wells with lower temps can be used for district heating/cooling, and the deeper wells with 145-150 degrees C can be used for electricity AND district heating/cooling.
@@deksroning125 There are not than many 5+ km wells. Iceland is not representative - it is a magma hot spot. In most places, temperature at 5 km below ground is ~150 C.
Ultra deep geothermal drilling is more complex that your simplistic proposal. Lots of good comments in the replies explaining why it’s so difficult to drill and then maintain a HTHP well. Another area of deep concern is the trace elements and corrosive gases that at elevated temperatures create severe embrittlement issues. North Sea Central Graben HPHT gas field has not been fully developed because of this. As always cost and risk must be the overriding metric that justifies introducing ambitious new technology. Another area of this proposal that is way off the mark is borehole stability and pressure control. A vertical 12km well to ULTRA HPHT formations is probably too expensive, too risky and quite simply beyond the capacity of 99% of current drilling rigs and the people who run them.
in finland heating houses with ground heat energy is very common, usualy make 200-300m deep holes, take pipes down there with compressed alcohol, and the heated alcohol comes up to heat exhanger, it will take some electricity to compress and run the pumps, but its much cheaper then just to heat up houses with just electricity.
In Italy, Larderello, Tuscany, there are some 30 centrals for a total of 800 MW of power, more than Island. But the vapors have also some polluting components that must keep in mind.
A problem you forget with geothermal energy is that you subtract heat from the rock and the rock is not a good thermal conductor. That means that a certain pipe has only a limited energy capacity until the rocks are cooled down enough so that the water will not be supercritical.
Exactly. And as he mentioned, it's very costly to drill a deep well. When the well runs out of heat and a new well must be drilled, did the amount of power generated pay for the first well to be drilled? Will the next well generate enough power to pay for its drilling? This also applies to the existing geothermal power plants that are located on hot spots in the earth's crust. The wells are much less deep than the wells that must be drilled where the heat is deep in the earth's crust. The drilling expenses must not exceed the returns from the power generated.
Rock at this temperatures and pressures (at 10 km or below, provided the right spot is chosen) is not like the rock here on the surface. It's actually getting softer and even partly melts, a bit like thick, highly viscous magma with solid parts in it, having quite different thermal conductivity. And there are saline fluids which also can transport heat. Of course there is a limit, but with the right amount of water pumped in, there will be little issues with keeping it hot. But there are other issues. In case a non water-permeable layer of clay is penetrated, and water spreads into formerly dry layers below (e.g., into Anhydrite), those may swell, raising the land above quite a bit. This already happened, and it literally ruined villages. Such issues are hard to predict, because of the actually unknown structure details and porosity of the rock below. Another issue is liberating toxic substances from under ground that were kept there before, e.g. heavy metals or radioactive material. And in case of a movement of the (softer) rock below, the pipes may easily get crushed, posing another issue. We actually don't know very much detail about the earth's mantle, as it is hard to just go and have a look. Thus it is difficult to chose the right spot to drill.
@@human_isomer I believe they line the borehole with a pipe down to below the depth where there are no more layers for water to go into. The water is under pressure so it seems possible that some may leak between the pipe and borehole.
You underestimate the available heat. You also fail to consider that multiple wells would be needed, either as stand-alone systems, or as a system of interconnected wells, circulating water with additives. It has been done already, and if the well spacing is good, then you get enough heat generating to run a power plant for decades before needing to introduce new wells.
Conventional wells are drilled using a fluid (drilling fluid, or 'mud') that has its density controlled to it keep the wellbore from collapsing. this also provides the medium to carry the rock out of the well, and to cool and lubricate the drill bit, as well as providing some hydraulic force to assist the bit in breaking rock. Drilling with plasma at any depth will be challenging because they will have to somehow support the borehole and stop it collapsing. Building up a vitreous layer on the wellbore will not provide much in the way of wellbore integrity, and it wont use all of the rock that's drilled to do it either, so there will need to be a mechanism to remove the rock. On top of that, electronics suitable for harsh environment, such as very hot wells do exist, but are extremely expensive, and do not have a long life. As a drilling engineer, I'm all for new technology to drill faster, and cheaper, while still staying safe, be it for oil and gas, or geothermal, but I am not sure this particular technology will do the job for the same price that we can do it now - and right now, we do have the technology to drill into rocks of the required temperature and pressure to maintain water at supercritical conditions.
@@Finimabob close. The best place to start using this method in North America would have to drill through garnet, or really eclogite but garnet is included in that. Lower Mississippi valley would be be the easiest to start, you could use conventional drilling to the first 16km since it's all sedimentary but under that it's all supercompressed rock under that.
I think you should take a look at the problems with the holes being under pressures and temps that make the rock there drilled in semi liquid causing them to flow and move collapsing the hole. There are other problems with this then just the drilling process as documented by the Kola Superdeep Borehole research teams.
“Hot Dry Rock” is the name for the type of Geothermal most of these systems would use. Another good keyword for anyone else geeking out on all this is “Enhanced Geothermal Systems” (hydraulic fracturing to make standard rock into porous rock)
That's the sign of ignorance from the snowflake generation, lack of attention to details. They have brilliant ideas, genius ideas, especially if they are "stable geniuses", but the whole thing resumes to the "South Park" episode in which the gnomes had a plan to steal underwear and make money out of it: 1) step one, steal underwear, 2) step two ... 3) step three: PROFIT! Infinite energy, cheap computers, profit for everyone! Most likely few of them know or understand the thermodynamics principles.
There are a lot of points missing from this video. Drilling deep isn’t limited to “how hot the rock is”. It’s the fact that tensile limitations of steel drill pipe etc cannot withstand the high weights associated with long lengths of pipe. That, coupled with the fact the rock that’s been drilled needs to be circulated back out of the hole which is done with drilling fluid. I could go into a whole discussion about the limitations of deep drilling but it would take ages
They have the belief it would be transported to the surface in gaseous form and as an owner of a plasma torch cutter I can reasonably conclude they smoked themselves silly.
Actually, the Krell did this quite successfully on Antares IV. Dr. Morbius had Robbie the Robot utilizing just a tiny fraction of the power derived from the core of Antares IV, to manufacture Krell metal. I always wondered just how far Commander Adam’s got with Morbius’s daughter Altaria back in 1956.
The Krell had the advantage of being able to convert mental energy/thoughts into material objects. Their technology was so advanced that the machines they created maintained and improved themselves. Unfortunately, in the end, that fabulous tech was their undoing, as always seems to be the case. Look at humanity. Every tech advancement leads to innumerable consequences, many problematic. Even ‘god’, who created the heavens and the earth. Heavens, awesome. Earth, even more incredible. Plants, animals, off the charts. Then man… whoops. 😮
Geothermal steam has a problem with mineral deposition. Geothermal groundwater is heavily mineralized. The hotter the water, the more mineral load it can carry.
I've said fro decades this makes much more sense than the fusion pipe dream. Problems involved would be FAR easier to solve than building a fusion reactor.
@@heyhoe168 Fusion would indeed be nice..... however, I've been hearing it's "10 years away" for well over 50 years. It is SO complicated and expensive, I suspect it may well be impractical.
as a German Biologist and Pythagorean - we need no Drilling. We have plenty of Volcanoes , Iceland is volcanic - where we can use Heat to transform Water into Hydrogen. Since 30 Years I promote this...
It's called hot rock thermal. We tried in Australia. 4 km hole in hot rock lasted about two weeks. So a couple million years of heated heated rock cooled off in about two weeks.
@@travisspace7786 It always takes less effort to lose energy than to build it up. That is why you have to use energy to heat pots. Not just leave them sitting. So yeah, it could be millions of years old and constant introduction to cool chemicals or water could easily kill its temperature.
4km is nothing. Try 20km instead. And there is an optimal amount of water you can run through it so that you don't take away more energy than flows to it. Also at 20km the rock conducts heat much better.
A far more cost effective method, that requires zero drilling involves the ocean. So long as the moon exists, there will be tidal movements, which could be a far more cost effective and totally clean way to generate electricity.
It's not "infinite", nor is it "unlimited" - it's relatively "infinite" compared to the expected lifetime of the human species. Also, "The Entrance to Hell" is a totally different hole in the ground...where do you do your research? O.o
Amazing that various governments around the world spend many trillions of dollars in an effort to reach Mars or other celestial bodies that are millions of miles away. Meanwhile....Earth's human civilization is in desperate need for alternative, abundant, clean energy, that will not only improve life dramatically, but could save the death of our planet and the solution may be only 20 kilometer from our reach. Someone please explain to me why the development of geothermal energy is taking a back seat to space exploration.
@@gracefool That opens a whole other issue. Healing the issues of our planet requires a buy-in and co-operation of every nation, but since the beginning of time, we haven't been able to stop pissing on each other.
@@chrisgraham2904 yup. The human heart has never changed, so only fools believe in those who say we need to unite under them to save the planet. They want power, and deceive themselves into thinking they're acting selflessly.
Great ideas. And, like a lot of things, it will probably become more practical with time and effort. I would not call this "renewable" energy, though. Maybe an [essentially] infinite energy source, unless, of course, the Earth's core renews itself. Thanks for posting this.
Nothing is technically renewable. The Sun will burn out in 5 billion years. The Earth core looses 100°C per billion years. So the sun will blow up fist before the earth's core cools down by a mere 500°C.
even if not for electric generation, geothermal has heating applications it could be used for to displace natural gas. and oil use you'd think in advances in heat pumps and cryogenics, the'd be able to make concentrators to up the heat to a more usable value. plus it's clean and can go in locations nuclear can't be, cutting infrastructure costs to connect it. best drilling tech is owned by oil. might explain it's slow take up.
I cringed every time you referred to the Earth's core. No hole has ever gotten remotely close to it. I don't think they've even gotten into the mantle. Various drilling projects have gotten very deep into the crust, but that's it. The earth is 6317 km in radius, the Kola Superdeep borehole is "only" 12 km deep. There are projects with the aim of drilling where the crust is at its thinnest, but I can't find any information about successes even there. One problem is that these places also happen to be in the ocean, after all. I still think nuclear is the best option for base load power. One objection I've heard is that the plant plus the exclusion zone around it could be better filled with a solar and/or wind farm. Why not do both? A nuclear plant in the middle with an exclusion zone filled with renewable generators. The best of both worlds with nuclear providing a stable base load and the renewables satisfying power for peak periods.
@@-aid4084 Geologists say its gotta be close to magma to do that and these boreholes ain't going a hundreth so deep. No magic answers for energy, just get enough engineers to accomplish the task.
There is a geothermal generation at Wairakei in NZ that has been grid connected since the mid 50's. Any volcanic shallow crust area has this potential, think calderas. Important minerals like lithium can be extracted and the hot water re-injected. The steam usually is wet and this liquid is corrosive and aggressive so lots of maintenance.
I had this idea 12 years ago Except when plasma hit certain things like water molecules it will separate the H²0 and will cause explosions and will collapse the drilling process second if steam is highly pressurized it doesn't flow freely
harvesting the core??? thats a disaster, but digging just right enough to use the heat is the goal theres unlimited heat below, a 300c degree hot place is enough to boil water and produce electrictiy.
I worked on drilling rigs in Northern Ca drilling into volcano. One of them blew in and killed the whole crew. I decided it was too dangerous and quit.
At the geothermal power plants the wells cool off over time and have to be drilled at another location. It's probably too expensive to drill new wells to the very deep depths these people are proposing. Also there is a risk that something bad could happen, like starting a new volcano.
One small problem , radio activity. I had a oil well drilled on my property strangely they left some iron pipe behind . Asking the scrap man it's value he said they left in behind because it became radioactive.
@@freemind.. Who says lava can't be radioactive? But part of the reason could be that lava in its magma state is hot enough that it can disperse radioactive matter, spreading out amongst the liquid, and potentially decaying faster due to interactions with other materials in the magma. Where a hot solid rock is just going to sit there, so concentrations of radioactive materials would be more likely.
The problem is that you cannot extract energy from anything without side effects. Energy may be large on a global scale, but local extraction of heat must have an impact on local geology. If you are taking heat from local rocks then that local rock is cooling, and what impact will that have in terms of what is happening to the material above the above the rock. Could you cause local earthquakes as the rock cools and gets denser allowing the rocks above to collapse down?
Sounds easy, sounds like a great idea, but geothermal plants are nothing new. Financially speaking, most only produce a very small amount of energy. One major cost hurdle is corrosion. There are some pretty caustic chemicals trapped in the Earth's crust. I have many geothermal plants around me (closest is less than 1 mile). I've seen expensive and exotic pipe material get eaten away by corrosion in a matter of a couple months. I congratulate on a nice presentation, but you have to take much more into consideration. There are theories and there is real life senarios.
Thank you for your comment, I agree that I have not covered many details which are important to the practical implementation of geothermal. I should have done more background reading as these are all very interesting and would have improved the video!
@@ZirothTech This is a great TH-cam video. I'm not a TH-camr and have no idea how much time, research and energy is required to put out a great video. I believe that is quite difficult to cover all of the bases. Speaking of "energy", how about simply utilizing water. Water is one of those few unique compounds that really don't fit in any category. Splitting water is not difficult.....and depending on the "type" of electricity (ac vs DC to include different Hz or frequency), sizeable amounts of H and O can be produced......quite easily. A nice informative video on that......that isn't boring, would be great. There is a ton of information out there, but most of it is really spread around and not presented together. I'm sure your viewers would enjoy that rabbit hole and many of the might learn a great deal. I know that it would interest me.
@@williamhopkins1625 You can never get more energy back after spliting water into hyrdrgen and oxygen... The subject has been done to death, it's not a great idea, too net negative in energy
As much as I appreciate the effort made in this video and as much as I like geothermal energy, there is just so much wrong in this video. Redoing some of the voiceovers and cleaning up the misunderstandings may get the video to standard. First, and foremost, there seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding about the structure of the Earth and the composition of its different layers. I get the feeling that everything below the crust(?) or below 15 km (?) depth is referred to as the Earth's core? Secondly, the core is largely iron and nickel, which means there is essentially no significant radiogenic heat produced in the core. The radiogenic heat is rather produced in the mantle and crust. Thirdly, the super deep drills at the Kola peninsular and in Germany never were motivated by exploring geothermal heat. These were scientific projects. Also, what is the Earth's impermeable cap rock? If it is impermeable, how do they drill there? Lastly, the normal geothermal gradient is estimated at something like 25-30 C per kilometre depth. This delineates some of the problems with deep drills, as you drill down you experience very high temperatures and pressures. The temperatures will compromise your drill, whereas the pressure will constantly try to close your drill hole. At 4:20 minutes in you say: "Attempts have been made to dig very deep into the Earth's core." No. The outer core is about 2900 km down and more than 3000 C hot. At the Kola Superdeep Borehole, they drilled just over 12 km ... you may find that there is still some meters left from 12 to 2900 km depth. At Kola, it was also somewhat hotter than expected (180 C) at 12 km depth, which was the problem that ended the drilling. Kola was chosen because back in the days the geothermal gradient below the Baltic shield was not well understood and they expected only 100C in 12 km depth. Then again, 180 C is not that much, you would think-water is supercritical at 373 C or so. Heat exchangers are needed to get water supercritical. So this business wants to drill 20 km (~500 C). OK. Not the core, though... still far from the mantle even, which is at about 660 km, even the lithosphere goes done to ~120 km. Do they have a plan for how they keep the hole open at extreme pressures and how to deal with the heat problem? The middle crust and the ductile-brittle transition is about at 15(-20) km depth, that is where rocks start to behave plastic over geological times...that is how hot it is down there. Just saying...
And you could have added that it's not actually infinite. The Earth is halfway through its life and will be consumed by the Sun. So it cannot be 'infinite'. It's a very long time, I know, but the overuse (and incorrect use) of the word annoys me.
They didn't run out of money digging the Kola superdeep borehole. It was almost twice as hot as it was supposed to be at that depth so the drill bits melted. They couldn't dig any deeper
I don't like the environmental side effects: earthquakes, and cooling magma sinks back toward the mantle. And the water used in the hole. Using existing hot water is no problem at all. I just don't like for profit outfits drilling and pumping under such circumstances. I feel more sanguine about nuclear power that is in a controlled, regulated reactor.
I hope they do it like how they dug the pylons for the Brooklyn bridge. A tunnel boring machine aimed straight down tho. Case the bore with concrete as you dig. Pour water in the hole while you dig and use chain link buckets to lift the waste out. You could have a crew on the machine as it digs to do maintenance. Elevator to move supplies and crew in and out
Geothermal is one of the worst energy types possible. The earth absolutely needs its heat, because it's never going to get hotter, it's always going to get colder. All that heat is left over from earth's formation. Without it we not only weaken the magnetosphere, we also would eventually change the earths rotation/tilt. It's not so bad in small cases, but if humanity came to rely on it and started extracting the energy in large amounts, it could pretty much doom humanity and all life on earth itself. One might say "Well we will stop if it seems to be causing harm". But firstly, the harm would be completely irreversible. You can't put heat back into the earth. Secondly, with us being soo hooked on it and already having all the infrastructure in place, people would not stop using it. Especially when we're talking in a future where people need energy more than ever, and billions of thirdworlders using increased energy as their lives modernize.
@@rocklobster3414 It would if used in large quantities. It can alter weather drastically if we ever truly relied on it. It can change wind and rain patterns, along with being proven that the ultimate effect it would have is creating an overall surface warming of the planet, and far more than all current electric consumption combined. This is because it interrupts and mixes colder and warmer layers of the atmosphere. So heat that would otherwise work its way up the atmosphere and out to space, gets trapped back down at ground level, where it is absorbed by the surface of the earth.
I have to object to the usage of “infinite” in the title. The amount of energy stored inside the Earth might seem like a lot on human scales, but it’s still nowhere on the scale of infinite. And even as a practical matter, if technology and the population continues to grow, we could conceivably burn through all that energy in a pretty short period of time, geologically speaking. The video says it could last for millions of years, but when you consider the Earth has already been around for 4 billion years, that doesn’t seem like all that much to me.
When Germany and France went looking for geothermal they pierced the water table and a layer of anhydrous gypsum, which swelled and now buildings that survived hundreds of years are breaking apart
My house has a geothermal generator. It wasnt that expensive. Also, nuclear and geothermal are the most effective energy production methods, the government should really stop funding wind and solar farms and go for nuclear wich for a fraction of the resources and cost will produce hundreds of times the energy
Solar and wind is really corruption to make the solar and wind companies rich... The electricity they produse is pretty much worthless because it is not stable so you can not practically use it and must have other energy produsers running anyway as backup. Solar and wind power only makes sense when it is part of offgrid personal systems with huge battery backup.
@Ziroth If steam turbines in powerplants are substituted by cryogenic turbines using the same fluids as on freezers, solar power can be used to generate electricity even at night at latitudes up to 40 degrees North or South.
Having worked in the Oil and Gas Industry and a bit with waveguides, I'm wondering what the losses on kilometers-long megawatt scale waveguide might be? Also, Microwaves powerful to blast through hard rock at meters per hour could do the same to a wave guide as well, and even if waveguide losses were minimal, over miles could add up and over months of operation could degrade the wave guide surface through: Conductor Losses: The conducting walls of the waveguide can lead to power losses due to the finite conductivity of the material. This results in the conversion of electromagnetic energy into heat as it propagates through the waveguide. Dielectric Losses: Dielectric materials such as insulators or fillers in the waveguide can absorb electromagnetic energy and convert it into heat. This absorption is characterized by the dielectric loss tangent, which quantifies the lossiness of the material. Radiation Losses: Imperfections in the waveguide, such as bends, joints, or gaps, can cause some of the energy to be radiated away from the waveguide, leading to power losses. Surface Roughness Losses: Irregularities or roughness on the inner surface of the waveguide can cause scattering of the electromagnetic waves, leading to additional power losses. Mode Conversion Losses: In multimode waveguides, energy can be lost during mode conversion processes, where energy is transferred from one mode to another. This can occur at irregularities or transitions within the waveguide. Aperture Losses: In waveguides with apertures, such as horn antennas, there can be losses associated with the transition of energy from the waveguide to free space. Absorption by Gases: If the waveguide contains gases, such as air or other contaminants, these gases can absorb electromagnetic energy and cause power losses. Skin Effect: At high frequencies, electromagnetic waves tend to propagate near the surface of the conductor. This skin effect can lead to increased power losses in high-frequency waveguides.
Good video, but disliked all the references to the core - my understanding is that these projects are just drilling into the crust and possibly mantle - even 'super deep' boreholes are still a very long way from the core!
There are actually quite a bit of hot springs out west and one or two spots in the eastern us. Even after the well cools too much to produce power it can still be used for geothermal heating and cooling.
Lots of good comments about the corrosion issues, reminds me of nuclear fission proposals using non water coolants such as lead or molten salt. But in those cases it might actually be much easier to solve the corrosion issues as you don't have most of the periodic table coming up a pipe onto your heat ex changer surface! My personal favorite tech for the upcoming advanced modular reactors (AMRs) would be a heavy nitrogen gas (N15) cooled and yttrium hydride moderated thermal spectrum direct cycle reactor. No heat ex changer, no corrosion issues (or a normal level of corrosion issues), and the reactor vessel isn't absolutely enormous as it is with a graphite or heavy water moderated reactor.
The manhole covered hole in russia is already deep enough for geothermal energy, the rock around the bore-hole was said to have the consistency of plasticine more than solid rock, and rock at those temperatures are more than sufficient for people to put a thermo-coupling into the middle of it and run a couple of heat exchangers to keep from fracking the mantle and causing an earthquake like conventional "geothermal" systems attempt to do, making the water use the entire rock structure without ensuring there are no contaminants and deep faults that can cause an earthquake or a sinkhole with erosion over time. The key to designing new geothermal systems is to make the borehead the actual heat extractor and use it to create steam power for a steam powered turbine at the very simplest.
Where my thoughts are, if this is going to be a normal way to generate energy. and 50,000+ places uses this. would it not gradually lower the temperature of the core over time? giving us new problems in the future?
A closed loop hydroelectric power station can be built so it is self charging so it can provide electricity indefinitely for less than the cost of any other system of electricity production.
It's not hard to imagine drilling a deep hole, but it is hard to imagine creating a reservoir underground artificially. You also need a way to force cold water into the reservoir, without the backpressure of the steam stopping this process. Basically, geothermal is only really practical on an active geothermal vent and reservoir. Making one artificially is basically "not possible".
There is a HUGE temperature differential between a black tar road and the earth a few feet down and to the side. Time to invest in a techno that is right in front of our faces.
1:11 _Sieg: pressure from both earth compressing (and even from air pressure above it) generates friction underground.. this is the only Real cause of magma, which bellows out as 'volcanoes'.._ *there is no such thing as a "magma core" or maybe even a "crust".. that would be impossible, the upper crust layers of the surface would have sunk immediately into that lava..*
I believe supercritical is a balance of heat and pressure not just heat. Too much heat and the water just boils off but under the right amount of pressure the water turns supercritical and is converted into a state between liquid and gas.
It is worth noting that there is not a net production of geothermal energy from the decay of radioisotopes in the current day. The heat flux from the Earths surface is greater tham the thermal energy produced by decay of all long lived radionuclides (e.g. U-238, U-235, 147Sm). Most of the Earths thermal energy was generated in the first 10 million years after the Solar System formed by the fast decay of short lived radionuclides (mainly Al-26, Mn-26, and some others such as 92Nb, 97Tc). This was a ubiquitous process in the early Solar System and provided the heat that produced some of the oldest differentiated meteorites (iron meteorites). Some of the heat was also provided by the accretion process amd the latent heat of crystallisatiom during silicate differentation, again both very early processes that occured before 60 million years after the Solar System formed. The large radius of the Earth has insulated this heat for 4.567 billion years. But the Earths geothermal energy has been slowly lost to space for most of that time and is still being lost today.
Would anyone have to dig very deep at all, if we started storing the Ambri "liquid metal batteries" underground? Ambri wants their batteries to stay hot. I'm sure they would get hot enough to keep the rock around them hot. They could capture the excess heat from the batteries with steam turbines and cool the batteries down if there's a theoretical unsafe temperature for Ambir's batteries.
Forget Nuclear fusion. I predict that Europe might one day depend on Africa for its energy. Africa has the capability to produce solar energy to firstly power the entire African content or even the whole world. This will completely change the power dynamic
What about heat resistance of the drill? Isn't it hot enough to melt metal 20km down? And how do you maintain a hole that goes through non-solid molten stone?
In Australia we have this energy freely available in a town called Portland which is in Victoria but the authorities closed it down, it supplied thermal energy to the hospital and heated the local swimming pool. Greed at the top end stopped us using it. Power companies must do favours for the rats that are in power.
Awful to see the authorities stopping access to such a great natural resource!
Thanks for the comment. I have always been misanthropic and distrusting of humans. They're awful creatures and it's obvious that humanity as a functioning unit is a failed experiment.This is an absolutely PERFECT example (one of many, I'm afraid) of homo sapiens failing at humanity.
Here's an easy solution...........
GET RID OF THE RATS!
NZ also had free energy to homes in parts of Rotorua but the City fathers determined that they wanted the thermal Attractions to get maximum benefits from their geothermal resources and cut private wells back and maybe even stopped people having free hot water and warm swimming pools .
@@chrisbraid2907 We have a large geothermal plant very near me here in Northern California, but the energy derived from it certainly isn't free.....it's anything but free! Fortunately, with the advent of NESARA/GESARA, we may finally see actual free energy, and all throughout the world. Peace!
as someone who has spent most of the last 18 years on oil rigs, as a geologist, and later an engineer, I can say that the process to drill deep geothermal wells is not really any different to conventional oil and gas drilling. We have the technology to drill very deeply already, we don't need this new plasma method that will use an incredible amount of electricity. Just because some technology exists, doesnt mean it's going to be affordable, or applicable.
Geodynamics, a company in Australia already built a proof of concept for enhanced geothermal, or hot dry rock geothermal (look for Geodynamics Habanero project). They drilled multiple wells to only 4-5km deep, and circulated water between wells, generating steam, and electricity. One major economic hurdle was affordable corrosion control, not the technology to drill the wells.
Conceptually, it's awesome, no need to burn fossil fuels, etc, but the reality is that there is no point building an amazing system if you cannot maintain the equipment and sell the end product at an affordable price.
Yeah. There’s some crap here hey… ‘attempts have been made to drill into the Earths core’.. Er.. no they haven’t. Touching the mantle would be hard enough. As you say, HTHP drilling is already done, but it’s not simple. There are many challenges and risks to it. I’ve drilled 120+ oil & gas wells. My mind boggles when anyone suggests drilling down to the upper mantle would be a simple affair even with any new tech. Note also that the Eden Project geothermal well referenced here has had drilling stopped because it caused felt seismicity locally - though geothermal is currently allowed to make around 3000x the seismic energy that was set by the U.K. regulators for shale gas etc. Either way, very deep drilling is no easy thing. As you say, it’s all about the economics.
Do you happen to know what the major hurdles are in the corrosion problem ?
Would stainless steel pipes be able to fit the bill, 2-300 degreees structural integrity and novel pipe cleaning process at regular intervals
i think you're missing on that as themperature get higher, they spend more money changing the drill bits, they don't last long and it makes drilling more expensive, so expensive that it reduce the ROI
@@zazugee Heat isn't that much of an issue for PDC bits and diamond impregnated bits, but it is for roller-cone bits as they have bearings. You are right though, actual drilling time is only a relatively small proportion of time spent on well construction, with each extra unplanned trip eating up the budget.
If I remember the Kola Superdeep Borehole history correctly, one of the main reasons they stopped it (beyond lacking money) was because at the depth they were at, the rock was almost like drilling through soft plastic. The drill didn't so much bite as "stir" the rock, and extraction of the drilled rock was made very difficult. That, and the well sides weren't very stable, collapsing around the drill head and string. They also kept having "mishaps" where sections of the drill string would break and they would have to abandon that current hole and start again above where the break occurred, probably due to the issues with the temperatures and the plasticity problems with the rocks at that depth.
If I remember correctly, the plasma drilling process claims to solve this. It's supposed to change the composition of the walls of the hole so it stays solid. Obviously it's impossible to know how it would work in practice until/unless there's a full sized demonstration, though.
A huge issue is the shear weight of the equipment hanging in the hole and that drill bits use this pressure on the bit to push as they drill. Maybe the plasma drilling can solve that, but we will see.
prove it or be removed from the internet for ever with digital ID, and i don't mean paraphrasing it. Prove you can reproduce what you're saying, because as of now with all the evidence we do have you're either a liar like the guy above you or a moron
You're correct. The rock wasn't too hard, but rather the earth was too soft.
I remember, "twisted off in hot bubble gum." As the last I heard of the drilling in Kola.
If I may, all oil and gas wells on Earth can actually be converted into Geothermal power plants for electricity and district heating/cooling.
There are many abandoned oil/gas wells (including coal mines) that can be used for such a purpose... and oil rigs in the North sea are especially usable because the geothermal gradient there is far higher (aka, hotter temperatures at shallower depths of bore holes which automatically provide high enough temps for electricitiy and heating production [combined]).
Additionally, A LOT of the said oil/gas wells already reach down 6 to 12 km... which are deep enough for electricity production.
The Geothermal facility which was newly constructed in Cornwall UK was said it will produce about 3 MW of electricity and 12 MW of heating/cooling - and this is with a well of about 4.5km depth - which is not bad, but its also shallower than many oil/gas wells).
It was also said that converting oil/gas wells to geothermal would cost HALF as much vs what it would cost to decomission them - and heck, why not? The infrastructure is already there.
Plus, all of the equipment, people and their skills are DIRECTLY transferrable to Geothermal sector.
While it is also accurate that for new geothermal power facilities the drilling costs are what account for 30-50% of the costs, what most people fail to realize is that utility scale geothermal power plants tend to pay for themselves in up to 10 years time (typically around 7 years maximum), after that, they are virtually free to run.
They also have no running fuel costs, have reliability and efficiency ratios of 90-100%, and levelized cost of Geothermal has been holding steady for over a decade now at $70 per MWh (whereas most running costs of Geothermal are between $14-$36 per MWh).
Essentially, Geothermal has all advantages of Nuclear, but none of its drawbacks (such as high running operational costs and production of nuclear waste - even new SMR's are ridiculously inefficient and will be producing 2-30 times more volume of nuclear waste than existing nuclear power plants - and their levelized costs are projected to rise exponentially in the coming decade - plus, standard operational costs of Nuclear are $156 per MWh - over DOUBLE of Geothermal).
Also, when properly maintained, Geothermal power plants can last over 100 years (as is evidenced by the Geothermal facility in Italy/Larderrelo)... and Geothermal brines tend to contain vast quantities of Lithium and other mineral resources.
It was said that the handful (about five or eight) of Geothermal plants in USA alone can provide the entire nation with many times more Lithium that it would ever know what to do with (and if we factor in other mineral resources in the brines, the payoff of the geothermal facility can be much faster than what I said above - similar ratios are for the Geothermal facility in Cornwall).
So, technically speaking, there is no need to make new wells because we have a vast amount of unused oil/gas infrastructure (even used ones) which can already be converted to Geothermal for both electricity and heating/cooling purposes.
But, I agree that Quaise' efforts at drilling 20km into the Earth would provide for much higher temperatures... but in that case, I would imagine that 20 km depth would provide for much higher temperatures than 400 degrees Celsius.
At any rate, the biggest problem plaguing Geothermal are not higher costs of drilling or our ability to access Geothermal resources for sustainable electricity and heating/cooling... its BIGGEST problem is LACK OF FUNDING.
Compared to any other energy source on Earth, Geothermal is the LEAST funded energy source on the planet.
And when we factor in how much money is given in subsidies to fossil fuels... you can tell that governments and corporation priorities do NOT lie where they should be.
Already, back in 2006, MIT released a study saying that we already had the technology at the time to access enough geothermal power to sustain Human civilisation for 200 years worth of... and that with improved technologies we can access enough Geothermal to sustain us for 2000 years.
The oil and gas industry has been digging deep bore holes ranging from 6-12 km depth for 100 years now... its not an issue of accessing Geothermal... the issue is lack of funding and willingness to shift our attention to Geothermal.
You think too logically and straight forward. The reason why intelligent people like yourself are not allowed to design and build these machines is because it cripple the oil industry and radicalize what people thought about government, society, the capabilities and purpose of the human race. Progress will be denied.
I mean we literally are sitting on a reactor, geothermal should be on the front of the energy solution
Most of them are not hot enough. E.g. if the bottom of the mine is 60 C, it's far too low to generate electricity (will cost too much per generated watt).
@@denysvlasenko1865 The shallower wells can still be used for district heating/cooling.
Works just the same.
The deeper wells (ones which go down 5-6km) would be hot enough to produce electricity (in Iceland, they usually dig about 5-6km deep wells and then connect a whole bunch of them together into a single geothermal facility).
Either way, its doable.
Shallower wells with lower temps can be used for district heating/cooling, and the deeper wells with 145-150 degrees C can be used for electricity AND district heating/cooling.
@@deksroning125 There are not than many 5+ km wells. Iceland is not representative - it is a magma hot spot. In most places, temperature at 5 km below ground is ~150 C.
Ultra deep geothermal drilling is more complex that your simplistic proposal. Lots of good comments in the replies explaining why it’s so difficult to drill and then maintain a HTHP well. Another area of deep concern is the trace elements and corrosive gases that at elevated temperatures create severe embrittlement issues. North Sea Central Graben HPHT gas field has not been fully developed because of this. As always cost and risk must be the overriding metric that justifies introducing ambitious new technology. Another area of this proposal that is way off the mark is borehole stability and pressure control. A vertical 12km well to ULTRA HPHT formations is probably too expensive, too risky and quite simply beyond the capacity of 99% of current drilling rigs and the people who run them.
There is a Canadian company digging a few kilometers down and successfully doing geothermal. They got hundreds of millions in funding.
Correct. They're called Eavor, and their plants are already in operation in Germany and Japan.
in finland heating houses with ground heat energy is very common, usualy make 200-300m deep holes, take pipes down there with compressed alcohol, and the heated alcohol comes up to heat exhanger, it will take some electricity to compress and run the pumps, but its much cheaper then just to heat up houses with just electricity.
In Italy, Larderello, Tuscany, there are some 30 centrals for a total of 800 MW of power, more than Island. But the vapors have also some polluting components that must keep in mind.
A problem you forget with geothermal energy is that you subtract heat from the rock and the rock is not a good thermal conductor. That means that a certain pipe has only a limited energy capacity until the rocks are cooled down enough so that the water will not be supercritical.
Exactly. And as he mentioned, it's very costly to drill a deep well. When the well runs out of heat and a new well must be drilled, did the amount of power generated pay for the first well to be drilled? Will the next well generate enough power to pay for its drilling?
This also applies to the existing geothermal power plants that are located on hot spots in the earth's crust. The wells are much less deep than the wells that must be drilled where the heat is deep in the earth's crust. The drilling expenses must not exceed the returns from the power generated.
Rock at this temperatures and pressures (at 10 km or below, provided the right spot is chosen) is not like the rock here on the surface. It's actually getting softer and even partly melts, a bit like thick, highly viscous magma with solid parts in it, having quite different thermal conductivity. And there are saline fluids which also can transport heat. Of course there is a limit, but with the right amount of water pumped in, there will be little issues with keeping it hot.
But there are other issues. In case a non water-permeable layer of clay is penetrated, and water spreads into formerly dry layers below (e.g., into Anhydrite), those may swell, raising the land above quite a bit. This already happened, and it literally ruined villages. Such issues are hard to predict, because of the actually unknown structure details and porosity of the rock below. Another issue is liberating toxic substances from under ground that were kept there before, e.g. heavy metals or radioactive material. And in case of a movement of the (softer) rock below, the pipes may easily get crushed, posing another issue.
We actually don't know very much detail about the earth's mantle, as it is hard to just go and have a look. Thus it is difficult to chose the right spot to drill.
@@human_isomer
I believe they line the borehole with a pipe down to below the depth where there are no more layers for water to go into. The water is under pressure so it seems possible that some may leak between the pipe and borehole.
You underestimate the available heat. You also fail to consider that multiple wells would be needed, either as stand-alone systems, or as a system of interconnected wells, circulating water with additives. It has been done already, and if the well spacing is good, then you get enough heat generating to run a power plant for decades before needing to introduce new wells.
@@human_isomer You absolutely do not need rock that hot. You need it to be 200-300 degrees (celsius) or so, enough to turn water into steam.
Conventional wells are drilled using a fluid (drilling fluid, or 'mud') that has its density controlled to it keep the wellbore from collapsing. this also provides the medium to carry the rock out of the well, and to cool and lubricate the drill bit, as well as providing some hydraulic force to assist the bit in breaking rock. Drilling with plasma at any depth will be challenging because they will have to somehow support the borehole and stop it collapsing. Building up a vitreous layer on the wellbore will not provide much in the way of wellbore integrity, and it wont use all of the rock that's drilled to do it either, so there will need to be a mechanism to remove the rock. On top of that, electronics suitable for harsh environment, such as very hot wells do exist, but are extremely expensive, and do not have a long life.
As a drilling engineer, I'm all for new technology to drill faster, and cheaper, while still staying safe, be it for oil and gas, or geothermal, but I am not sure this particular technology will do the job for the same price that we can do it now - and right now, we do have the technology to drill into rocks of the required temperature and pressure to maintain water at supercritical conditions.
Can such deep drilling and injecting massive amount of fluids cause seismic instabilities?
Why don't we use pressurised water instead of drillbits to create bores?
@@wowalamoiz9489 pressured water to drill through granite?
@@Finimabob it would be child's play
th-cam.com/video/YlacOX68OME/w-d-xo.html
@@Finimabob close. The best place to start using this method in North America would have to drill through garnet, or really eclogite but garnet is included in that. Lower Mississippi valley would be be the easiest to start, you could use conventional drilling to the first 16km since it's all sedimentary but under that it's all supercompressed rock under that.
I think you should take a look at the problems with the holes being under pressures and temps that make the rock there drilled in semi liquid causing them to flow and move collapsing the hole. There are other problems with this then just the drilling process as documented by the Kola Superdeep Borehole research teams.
“Hot Dry Rock” is the name for the type of Geothermal most of these systems would use. Another good keyword for anyone else geeking out on all this is “Enhanced Geothermal Systems” (hydraulic fracturing to make standard rock into porous rock)
I assume the word "infinite" is being casually misused in this video? Seems unscientific to suppose that this hole could ever provide infinite energy.
That's the sign of ignorance from the snowflake generation, lack of attention to details. They have brilliant ideas, genius ideas, especially if they are "stable geniuses", but the whole thing resumes to the "South Park" episode in which the gnomes had a plan to steal underwear and make money out of it:
1) step one, steal underwear,
2) step two ...
3) step three: PROFIT!
Infinite energy, cheap computers, profit for everyone! Most likely few of them know or understand the thermodynamics principles.
There are a lot of points missing from this video. Drilling deep isn’t limited to “how hot the rock is”. It’s the fact that tensile limitations of steel drill pipe etc cannot withstand the high weights associated with long lengths of pipe. That, coupled with the fact the rock that’s been drilled needs to be circulated back out of the hole which is done with drilling fluid. I could go into a whole discussion about the limitations of deep drilling but it would take ages
They have the belief it would be transported to the surface in gaseous form and as an owner of a plasma torch cutter I can reasonably conclude they smoked themselves silly.
Actually, the Krell did this quite successfully on Antares IV. Dr. Morbius had Robbie the Robot utilizing just a tiny fraction of the power derived from the core of Antares IV, to manufacture Krell metal. I always wondered just how far Commander Adam’s got with Morbius’s daughter Altaria back in 1956.
It's Morbin Time
That wasn't geothermal power.
That was 100s of nuclear reactors.
Krell? Are you referring Marvel comics?
The Krell had the advantage of being able to convert mental energy/thoughts into material objects. Their technology was so advanced that the machines they created maintained and improved themselves. Unfortunately, in the end, that fabulous tech was their undoing, as always seems to be the case. Look at humanity. Every tech advancement leads to innumerable consequences, many problematic. Even ‘god’, who created the heavens and the earth. Heavens, awesome. Earth, even more incredible. Plants, animals, off the charts. Then man… whoops. 😮
I just started digging . I can feel it getting warmer already had to take my coat off.
Geothermal steam has a problem with mineral deposition. Geothermal groundwater is heavily mineralized. The hotter the water, the more mineral load it can carry.
I've said fro decades this makes much more sense than the fusion pipe dream. Problems involved would be FAR easier to solve than building a fusion reactor.
Yes, however having fusion would be nice too. The question is: how much time do we have?
@@heyhoe168 Fusion would indeed be nice..... however, I've been hearing it's "10 years away" for well over 50 years. It is SO complicated and expensive, I suspect it may well be impractical.
as a German Biologist and Pythagorean - we need no Drilling. We have plenty of Volcanoes , Iceland is volcanic - where we can use Heat to transform Water into Hydrogen. Since 30 Years I promote this...
We don't have volcanoes in every place which needs energy.
@Denys Vlasenko we do not have Intelligence -
where we need it
most
why don't they just tap in to volcanos where the lava is already closer to the surface?
Possibly because occasionally they explode
It's called hot rock thermal. We tried in Australia. 4 km hole in hot rock lasted about two weeks. So a couple million years of heated heated rock cooled off in about two weeks.
Perhaps its not millions of years old
@@travisspace7786 It always takes less effort to lose energy than to build it up. That is why you have to use energy to heat pots. Not just leave them sitting. So yeah, it could be millions of years old and constant introduction to cool chemicals or water could easily kill its temperature.
4km is nothing. Try 20km instead. And there is an optimal amount of water you can run through it so that you don't take away more energy than flows to it. Also at 20km the rock conducts heat much better.
@@jimj2683 At more than about 10 km of depth rocks start to flow like plastic. It's not going to be easy to keep a 20km deep hole open.
A far more cost effective method, that requires zero drilling involves the ocean. So long as the moon exists, there will be tidal movements, which could be a far more cost effective and totally clean way to generate electricity.
"could be a far more cost effective" how? Did you calculate $ per watt?
It's not "infinite", nor is it "unlimited" - it's relatively "infinite" compared to the expected lifetime of the human species.
Also, "The Entrance to Hell" is a totally different hole in the ground...where do you do your research? O.o
Thank god for break throughs. They are so much better than developments.
Amazing that various governments around the world spend many trillions of dollars in an effort to reach Mars or other celestial bodies that are millions of miles away. Meanwhile....Earth's human civilization is in desperate need for alternative, abundant, clean energy, that will not only improve life dramatically, but could save the death of our planet and the solution may be only 20 kilometer from our reach. Someone please explain to me why the development of geothermal energy is taking a back seat to space exploration.
Because rocketry and satellites are important for war.
@@gracefool That opens a whole other issue. Healing the issues of our planet requires a buy-in and co-operation of every nation, but since the beginning of time, we haven't been able to stop pissing on each other.
@@chrisgraham2904 yup. The human heart has never changed, so only fools believe in those who say we need to unite under them to save the planet. They want power, and deceive themselves into thinking they're acting selflessly.
Imagine the amount of energy from falling water if you could piss dead center down the deepest hole
Great ideas. And, like a lot of things, it will probably become more practical with time and effort. I would not call this "renewable" energy, though. Maybe an [essentially] infinite energy source, unless, of course, the Earth's core renews itself. Thanks for posting this.
Nothing is technically renewable. The Sun will burn out in 5 billion years. The Earth core looses 100°C per billion years. So the sun will blow up fist before the earth's core cools down by a mere 500°C.
By that logic no energy is renewable
By that logic, solar is not renewable as it will only last until the sun goes out.
@@Debbiebabe69 There isn't one sun/star thou. With our progress just a million year is enough to colonize the local star systems.
@@khanch.6807 If we get to the point where we can colonize other stars, then obviously we have to be at the point where we can visit other planets.
and it still just keeps on going that way endlessly. we never stop and actually give things time to meld enough for good results
even if not for electric generation, geothermal has heating applications it could be used for to displace natural gas. and oil use
you'd think in advances in heat pumps and cryogenics, the'd be able to make concentrators to up the heat to a more usable value.
plus it's clean and can go in locations nuclear can't be, cutting infrastructure costs to connect it.
best drilling tech is owned by oil.
might explain it's slow take up.
You forgot the coal and wood. Yes, heating is expensive enough to be the major goal.
I cringed every time you referred to the Earth's core. No hole has ever gotten remotely close to it. I don't think they've even gotten into the mantle. Various drilling projects have gotten very deep into the crust, but that's it. The earth is 6317 km in radius, the Kola Superdeep borehole is "only" 12 km deep. There are projects with the aim of drilling where the crust is at its thinnest, but I can't find any information about successes even there. One problem is that these places also happen to be in the ocean, after all.
I still think nuclear is the best option for base load power. One objection I've heard is that the plant plus the exclusion zone around it could be better filled with a solar and/or wind farm. Why not do both? A nuclear plant in the middle with an exclusion zone filled with renewable generators. The best of both worlds with nuclear providing a stable base load and the renewables satisfying power for peak periods.
Good stuff here. My only concern, as yet unknown I suppose, is will these deep geothermal plants cause quakes?
Yea dude shark-quake-nado 4
Snowmado
If we are stupid enough to leave a hole in the crust edges, it will likely make a volcano
@@-aid4084 Geologists say its gotta be close to magma to do that and these boreholes ain't going a hundreth so deep. No magic answers for energy, just get enough engineers to accomplish the task.
There is a geothermal generation at Wairakei in NZ that has been grid connected since the mid 50's. Any volcanic shallow crust area has this potential, think calderas. Important minerals like lithium can be extracted and the hot water re-injected. The steam usually is wet and this liquid is corrosive and aggressive so lots of maintenance.
I had this idea 12 years ago
Except when plasma hit certain things like water molecules it will separate the H²0 and will cause explosions and will collapse the drilling process second if steam is highly pressurized it doesn't flow freely
harvesting the core??? thats a disaster, but digging just right enough to use the heat is the goal theres unlimited heat below, a 300c degree hot place is enough to boil water and produce electrictiy.
I thought that an additional issue with the deep boreholes was the hole collapsing in on itself when it was that deep?
I worked on drilling rigs in Northern Ca drilling into volcano. One of them blew in and killed the whole crew.
I decided it was too dangerous and quit.
At the geothermal power plants the wells cool off over time and have to be drilled at another location. It's probably too expensive to drill new wells to the very deep depths these people are proposing. Also there is a risk that something bad could happen, like starting a new volcano.
8500 coal plants on earth. WOW IS THE WORD !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The next big breakthrough will be to harness the planet's iron core for limitless energy, but we all know what happened on Krypton now don't we :)
Only until it cools down to the point we lose our magnetic poles and we all die from uv radiation xD
really great vid - appreciate the sources in the caption
One small problem , radio activity. I had a oil well drilled on my property strangely they left some iron pipe behind . Asking the scrap man it's value he said they left in behind because it became radioactive.
Interesting. I wonder... *If lava is magma that has been kept molten for billions of years by radioactive decay, why is lava NOT radioactive??*
@@freemind.. Who says lava can't be radioactive? But part of the reason could be that lava in its magma state is hot enough that it can disperse radioactive matter, spreading out amongst the liquid, and potentially decaying faster due to interactions with other materials in the magma. Where a hot solid rock is just going to sit there, so concentrations of radioactive materials would be more likely.
yes, most oil is too. its mostly harmless alpha radiation. but some wells are unusable
I guess you have redefined infinite.
The problem is that you cannot extract energy from anything without side effects.
Energy may be large on a global scale, but local extraction of heat must have an impact on local geology. If you are taking heat from local rocks then that local rock is cooling, and what impact will that have in terms of what is happening to the material above the above the rock. Could you cause local earthquakes as the rock cools and gets denser allowing the rocks above to collapse down?
This exactly.
Great video very informative
Sounds easy, sounds like a great idea, but geothermal plants are nothing new. Financially speaking, most only produce a very small amount of energy. One major cost hurdle is corrosion. There are some pretty caustic chemicals trapped in the Earth's crust. I have many geothermal plants around me (closest is less than 1 mile). I've seen expensive and exotic pipe material get eaten away by corrosion in a matter of a couple months.
I congratulate on a nice presentation, but you have to take much more into consideration. There are theories and there is real life senarios.
Thank you for your comment, I agree that I have not covered many details which are important to the practical implementation of geothermal. I should have done more background reading as these are all very interesting and would have improved the video!
@@ZirothTech This is a great TH-cam video. I'm not a TH-camr and have no idea how much time, research and energy is required to put out a great video. I believe that is quite difficult to cover all of the bases.
Speaking of "energy", how about simply utilizing water. Water is one of those few unique compounds that really don't fit in any category. Splitting water is not difficult.....and depending on the "type" of electricity (ac vs DC to include different Hz or frequency), sizeable amounts of H and O can be produced......quite easily. A nice informative video on that......that isn't boring, would be great. There is a ton of information out there, but most of it is really spread around and not presented together.
I'm sure your viewers would enjoy that rabbit hole and many of the might learn a great deal. I know that it would interest me.
@@williamhopkins1625 You can never get more energy back after spliting water into hyrdrgen and oxygen... The subject has been done to death, it's not a great idea, too net negative in energy
what if you have a fully sealed closed cycle? Or do you mean corrosion from the outside?
Great visuals! Are they from Quaise?
As much as I appreciate the effort made in this video and as much as I like geothermal energy, there is just so much wrong in this video. Redoing some of the voiceovers and cleaning up the misunderstandings may get the video to standard. First, and foremost, there seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding about the structure of the Earth and the composition of its different layers. I get the feeling that everything below the crust(?) or below 15 km (?) depth is referred to as the Earth's core? Secondly, the core is largely iron and nickel, which means there is essentially no significant radiogenic heat produced in the core. The radiogenic heat is rather produced in the mantle and crust. Thirdly, the super deep drills at the Kola peninsular and in Germany never were motivated by exploring geothermal heat. These were scientific projects. Also, what is the Earth's impermeable cap rock? If it is impermeable, how do they drill there? Lastly, the normal geothermal gradient is estimated at something like 25-30 C per kilometre depth. This delineates some of the problems with deep drills, as you drill down you experience very high temperatures and pressures. The temperatures will compromise your drill, whereas the pressure will constantly try to close your drill hole. At 4:20 minutes in you say: "Attempts have been made to dig very deep into the Earth's core." No. The outer core is about 2900 km down and more than 3000 C hot. At the Kola Superdeep Borehole, they drilled just over 12 km ... you may find that there is still some meters left from 12 to 2900 km depth. At Kola, it was also somewhat hotter than expected (180 C) at 12 km depth, which was the problem that ended the drilling. Kola was chosen because back in the days the geothermal gradient below the Baltic shield was not well understood and they expected only 100C in 12 km depth. Then again, 180 C is not that much, you would think-water is supercritical at 373 C or so. Heat exchangers are needed to get water supercritical. So this business wants to drill 20 km (~500 C). OK. Not the core, though... still far from the mantle even, which is at about 660 km, even the lithosphere goes done to ~120 km. Do they have a plan for how they keep the hole open at extreme pressures and how to deal with the heat problem? The middle crust and the ductile-brittle transition is about at 15(-20) km depth, that is where rocks start to behave plastic over geological times...that is how hot it is down there. Just saying...
Agreed - this guy is a moron. Even worse, he's spreading all this false information as if it were true...
And you could have added that it's not actually infinite. The Earth is halfway through its life and will be consumed by the Sun. So it cannot be 'infinite'. It's a very long time, I know, but the overuse (and incorrect use) of the word annoys me.
> russia tried
> running out of money
I see a pattern emerging
Great topic. This sounds like something with a lot of potential. Thanks for the well presented info. 👍
Thank you!
They didn't run out of money digging the Kola superdeep borehole. It was almost twice as hot as it was supposed to be at that depth so the drill bits melted. They couldn't dig any deeper
I don't like the environmental side effects: earthquakes, and cooling magma sinks back toward the mantle. And the water used in the hole. Using existing hot water is no problem at all. I just don't like for profit outfits drilling and pumping under such circumstances. I feel more sanguine about nuclear power that is in a controlled, regulated reactor.
I hope they do it like how they dug the pylons for the Brooklyn bridge. A tunnel boring machine aimed straight down tho. Case the bore with concrete as you dig. Pour water in the hole while you dig and use chain link buckets to lift the waste out.
You could have a crew on the machine as it digs to do maintenance. Elevator to move supplies and crew in and out
Has anyone done a calculation to estimate how quickly, and to what extent heat extraction from the Earth's interior degrades the magnetosphere?
Geothermal is one of the worst energy types possible. The earth absolutely needs its heat, because it's never going to get hotter, it's always going to get colder. All that heat is left over from earth's formation. Without it we not only weaken the magnetosphere, we also would eventually change the earths rotation/tilt. It's not so bad in small cases, but if humanity came to rely on it and started extracting the energy in large amounts, it could pretty much doom humanity and all life on earth itself. One might say "Well we will stop if it seems to be causing harm". But firstly, the harm would be completely irreversible. You can't put heat back into the earth. Secondly, with us being soo hooked on it and already having all the infrastructure in place, people would not stop using it. Especially when we're talking in a future where people need energy more than ever, and billions of thirdworlders using increased energy as their lives modernize.
@@rocklobster3414 It would if used in large quantities. It can alter weather drastically if we ever truly relied on it. It can change wind and rain patterns, along with being proven that the ultimate effect it would have is creating an overall surface warming of the planet, and far more than all current electric consumption combined. This is because it interrupts and mixes colder and warmer layers of the atmosphere. So heat that would otherwise work its way up the atmosphere and out to space, gets trapped back down at ground level, where it is absorbed by the surface of the earth.
Three things rule the World:
stupidity, fear and greed.
Albert Einstein.
I have to object to the usage of “infinite” in the title. The amount of energy stored inside the Earth might seem like a lot on human scales, but it’s still nowhere on the scale of infinite. And even as a practical matter, if technology and the population continues to grow, we could conceivably burn through all that energy in a pretty short period of time, geologically speaking. The video says it could last for millions of years, but when you consider the Earth has already been around for 4 billion years, that doesn’t seem like all that much to me.
When Germany and France went looking for geothermal they pierced the water table and a layer of anhydrous gypsum, which swelled and now buildings that survived hundreds of years are breaking apart
My house has a geothermal generator. It wasnt that expensive. Also, nuclear and geothermal are the most effective energy production methods, the government should really stop funding wind and solar farms and go for nuclear wich for a fraction of the resources and cost will produce hundreds of times the energy
Solar and wind is really corruption to make the solar and wind companies rich... The electricity they produse is pretty much worthless because it is not stable so you can not practically use it and must have other energy produsers running anyway as backup. Solar and wind power only makes sense when it is part of offgrid personal systems with huge battery backup.
You want to see us destroy ourselves?
@@joesantos99 sheep
@Ziroth If steam turbines in powerplants are substituted by cryogenic turbines using the same fluids as on freezers, solar power can be used to generate electricity even at night at latitudes up to 40 degrees North or South.
Having worked in the Oil and Gas Industry and a bit with waveguides, I'm wondering what the losses on kilometers-long megawatt scale waveguide might be? Also, Microwaves powerful to blast through hard rock at meters per hour could do the same to a wave guide as well, and even if waveguide losses were minimal, over miles could add up and over months of operation could degrade the wave guide surface through:
Conductor Losses: The conducting walls of the waveguide can lead to power losses due to the finite conductivity of the material. This results in the conversion of electromagnetic energy into heat as it propagates through the waveguide.
Dielectric Losses: Dielectric materials such as insulators or fillers in the waveguide can absorb electromagnetic energy and convert it into heat. This absorption is characterized by the dielectric loss tangent, which quantifies the lossiness of the material.
Radiation Losses: Imperfections in the waveguide, such as bends, joints, or gaps, can cause some of the energy to be radiated away from the waveguide, leading to power losses.
Surface Roughness Losses: Irregularities or roughness on the inner surface of the waveguide can cause scattering of the electromagnetic waves, leading to additional power losses.
Mode Conversion Losses: In multimode waveguides, energy can be lost during mode conversion processes, where energy is transferred from one mode to another. This can occur at irregularities or transitions within the waveguide.
Aperture Losses: In waveguides with apertures, such as horn antennas, there can be losses associated with the transition of energy from the waveguide to free space.
Absorption by Gases: If the waveguide contains gases, such as air or other contaminants, these gases can absorb electromagnetic energy and cause power losses.
Skin Effect: At high frequencies, electromagnetic waves tend to propagate near the surface of the conductor. This skin effect can lead to increased power losses in high-frequency waveguides.
This is very interesting to me. I hope we figure out how to economically use geothermal. Great Video.
Good video, but disliked all the references to the core - my understanding is that these projects are just drilling into the crust and possibly mantle - even 'super deep' boreholes are still a very long way from the core!
Maybe this technology could help tuneling as well. For subways, water distribution channels and so on.
Great idea!
There are actually quite a bit of hot springs out west and one or two spots in the eastern us. Even after the well cools too much to produce power it can still be used for geothermal heating and cooling.
Lots of good comments about the corrosion issues, reminds me of nuclear fission proposals using non water coolants such as lead or molten salt. But in those cases it might actually be much easier to solve the corrosion issues as you don't have most of the periodic table coming up a pipe onto your heat ex changer surface!
My personal favorite tech for the upcoming advanced modular reactors (AMRs) would be a heavy nitrogen gas (N15) cooled and yttrium hydride moderated thermal spectrum direct cycle reactor. No heat ex changer, no corrosion issues (or a normal level of corrosion issues), and the reactor vessel isn't absolutely enormous as it is with a graphite or heavy water moderated reactor.
O I love this channel! Man you are smart. This plasma will happen it’s a game changer in cutting anything!
Thanks for your time
Congrats 🎉on 100k subscribers!!!
How do you protect a 20 km drill hole from closure due to earth shifting or hole collapse?
You guys appear to let us know about a lot of pipe dreams! Best of luck to all of us!
Why not just use super volcanoes? You don't have to dig far and they need to be cooled down before they explode.
The manhole covered hole in russia is already deep enough for geothermal energy, the rock around the bore-hole was said to have the consistency of plasticine more than solid rock, and rock at those temperatures are more than sufficient for people to put a thermo-coupling into the middle of it and run a couple of heat exchangers to keep from fracking the mantle and causing an earthquake like conventional "geothermal" systems attempt to do, making the water use the entire rock structure without ensuring there are no contaminants and deep faults that can cause an earthquake or a sinkhole with erosion over time. The key to designing new geothermal systems is to make the borehead the actual heat extractor and use it to create steam power for a steam powered turbine at the very simplest.
"Oh no we rapidly cooled the earths core and the earth magnetic field is being disrupted" future scientists probably.
Great! Can they start tomorrow and finish in 14 days?
in drilling that far down is there a chance of creating a small unstopple volcano.
I have a patented process to drill through hard rock and abrasive jetting that can drill many times faster than standard drill bits.
Where my thoughts are, if this is going to be a normal way to generate energy. and 50,000+ places uses this. would it not gradually lower the temperature of the core over time? giving us new problems in the future?
A closed loop hydroelectric power station can be built so it is self charging so it can provide electricity indefinitely for less than the cost of any other system of electricity production.
Die Jungs und Mädels vom KIT sind auch immer ganz vorne dabei, wenn's um solche Angelegenheiten geht. Der größe Stolz Karlsruhes!
It's not hard to imagine drilling a deep hole, but it is hard to imagine creating a reservoir underground artificially. You also need a way to force cold water into the reservoir, without the backpressure of the steam stopping this process. Basically, geothermal is only really practical on an active geothermal vent and reservoir. Making one artificially is basically "not possible".
There is a HUGE temperature differential between a black tar road and the earth a few feet down and to the side. Time to invest in a techno that is right in front of our faces.
just to be clear here, he's essentially talking about harvesting volcanic power.
Which, might just be the best supervillain sell I've ever seen.
The unlimited heat from ground sounds like "Unlimited fish from the ocean" at ancient times.
I think somebody needs to look up the difference between infinite and large.
1:11 _Sieg: pressure from both earth compressing (and even from air pressure above it) generates friction underground.. this is the only Real cause of magma, which bellows out as 'volcanoes'.._
*there is no such thing as a "magma core" or maybe even a "crust".. that would be impossible, the upper crust layers of the surface would have sunk immediately into that lava..*
It works just fine for boats on the ocean though.
I believe supercritical is a balance of heat and pressure not just heat. Too much heat and the water just boils off but under the right amount of pressure the water turns supercritical and is converted into a state between liquid and gas.
There is a geothermal plant generator at China Lake CA on the Navy Base.
What becomes of the materials the plasmadrills come in contact with? Could this technic also be used to dig tunnels more efficiently?
There is a geothermal plant on the Naval Air Station at China Lake in South California.
In Kenya we produce 1,000 MW from geothermal with a potential to produce upto 10,000 MW...
Straight to the point with good information. Thank you 👍
Just a question. Why can't we use the volcanos we have everywhere and pipe over them to create the same vapor?
we shouldn't do this. this will kill the planet earth. let's just all quiver in bitter coldness.
At a certain point the drill a length of pipe then pull out to add casing and before they can get casing in the length they drilled fills back in.
It is worth noting that there is not a net production of geothermal energy from the decay of radioisotopes in the current day. The heat flux from the Earths surface is greater tham the thermal energy produced by decay of all long lived radionuclides (e.g. U-238, U-235, 147Sm). Most of the Earths thermal energy was generated in the first 10 million years after the Solar System formed by the fast decay of short lived radionuclides (mainly Al-26, Mn-26, and some others such as 92Nb, 97Tc). This was a ubiquitous process in the early Solar System and provided the heat that produced some of the oldest differentiated meteorites (iron meteorites). Some of the heat was also provided by the accretion process amd the latent heat of crystallisatiom during silicate differentation, again both very early processes that occured before 60 million years after the Solar System formed. The large radius of the Earth has insulated this heat for 4.567 billion years. But the Earths geothermal energy has been slowly lost to space for most of that time and is still being lost today.
I did this in my backyard works great 👍
Would anyone have to dig very deep at all, if we started storing the Ambri "liquid metal batteries" underground? Ambri wants their batteries to stay hot. I'm sure they would get hot enough to keep the rock around them hot. They could capture the excess heat from the batteries with steam turbines and cool the batteries down if there's a theoretical unsafe temperature for Ambir's batteries.
Forget Nuclear fusion. I predict that Europe might one day depend on Africa for its energy. Africa has the capability to produce solar energy to firstly power the entire African content or even the whole world. This will completely change the power dynamic
They did that on superman in the 50's , didn't end well...
I'm interested in the plasma drill, if only to see them *absolutely destroy* the record for drilling.
What about heat resistance of the drill? Isn't it hot enough to melt metal 20km down? And how do you maintain a hole that goes through non-solid molten stone?