DE: Geothermal energy is indispensable for transforming the heating sector

Started by rcjordan, February 17, 2022, 01:45:41 PM

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rcjordan


buckworks

>> chaos

An old saying comes to mind, "Be careful what you wish for ..."

rcjordan

IIRC, we also have determined that fracking has helped initiate earthquakes.

In short, we cannot just blithely assume that every geothermal extraction will be benign.

Debbie keeps screaming that we need to be pursuing "closed loop" geothermal.  And, while 700c is the awesome, scary stuff of "Journey To The Center Of The Earth', she reminds me that my heat pump does perfectly fine on 58f ground water.

ergophobe

I think closing the loop at great depths is very difficult.

And as mentioned in the Science Fact of the Day a couple days ago, per unit there is five times more energy in 400C water than in 200C water. So maybe 10X or more in 700C water. So if you're talking about how much water you need to extract and, in an EGS system how much you need to pump back in, you're looking at a big difference.

So I fall back to my favorite design/tech quip: for every solution, there's  problem.

rcjordan


ergophobe

Japan's hot-spring resorts are blocking geothermal energy plants
A centuries-old leisure industry is a powerful, but not insurmountable, obstacle to progress
https://www.economist.com/asia/2023/05/28/japans-hot-spring-resorts-are-blocking-geothermal-energy-plants

There's always an interest group....