Most people visiting Yellowstone National Park make a point of seeing the Old Faithful Geyser shoot it's boiling water 150 feet into the air every hour or so. It's amazing, powerful and, maybe most importantly, predictable. So predictable, in fact, that some think its source -- water superheated by hot magma deep in the earth -- might just be able to be harnessed (or harvested, as the case may be) as a renewable and infinitely available source of clean energy. On a small scale, this is already a reality. More and more homes and buildings now rely on geothermal energy, delivered through a well drilled into the earth, as their primary heat source. And that may only be the beginning.
Alta Rock Energy, www.altarockenergy.com a Seattle, Washington based alternative energy company, is racing to develop the first power-plant-sized, renewable electric generating system using water, or more accurately steam, super-heated in the earth, to power turbines and create electricity. Alta Rock's technology piggybacks on, and is similar to, the hydraulic fracturing technology (hydraulic shearing in this case) that's proven to be so successful extracting oil and natural gas that was, until recently, not economically feasible to extract. They call their process Engineered Geothermal Systems, or EGS. In a nutshell, the EGS technology pumps millions of gallons of water into the earth under high pressure, shearing the rock and creating fissures into which the water can flow. They follow that up with directional wells into which they inject water that heats up and recirculates on a loop through the power plant and back into the well on a continuous basis, resulting in a powerful, closed-loop power generation system.
Emission-free and carbon-neutral, they say.
There's a cool video in the link that explains the process. It's narrated by Ed Begley Jr., www.edbegley.com, the actor / environmentalist who (personal disclosure) I really like as an actor, but not so much otherwise. I think they could have chosen a more powerful, less "President-Obama-wants-him" (a complete supposition on my part) narrator, for whatever that might be worth. Maybe Morgan Freeman or Anderson Cooper.....
Unfortunately, Alta Rock's technology still needs a huge dollop of government funding to make it through the test phase. And they've had several projects that have simply not worked. The good news is that they're now attracting funding from the Google's of the world (www.google.com) and others. Their newest project, a $43MM venture to drill and fracture a well in the side of a volcano in central Oregon is backed by the Department of Energy, www.energy.gov. Learn more about the project at http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2012/01/15/project_to_pour_water_into_volcano_to_make_power/
Will Alta Rock Energy's EGS technology change the game, replacing our much-maligned, but conveniently efficient, coal and natural gas-fueled power plants? It seems no one knows at this point. To me, it sounds like a great idea that, economically, might be a bit ahead of its time. But, then again, that's what the guys with the oars probably said the first time they saw Fulton's (or the guy he's suspected of stealing the idea from) steam engine. "It'll never work" is, perhaps, the most uninformed (and grammatically incorrect?) sentence in the English language. This just might. And, regardless, it's cool to think about.
Take a look at the picture below to get a sense of how EGS is supposed to work. You can learn more by checking out the video at www.altarockenergy.com as well as several others on the topic of geothermal energy at www.youtube.com.
Comments