Iceland Eyes Liquid Magma As Energy Source 215
An anonymous reader writes "Scientists in Iceland have been studying and utilizing the power of geothermal wells for years. In 2009 one such study hit a standstill when a group ran into magma halfway into their dig. The roadblock has become a blessing in disguise, as recent research has shown that the magma can act as a potent new source of geothermal energy powerful enough to heat 25,000 to 30,000 homes."
Profound (Score:4, Funny)
How profound, we can heat water with magma.
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Re:Profound (Score:5, Funny)
How profound, we can heat water with magma.
How appropriate, you fight like a... volcano cow?
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increased efficiency (Score:3)
Three times as much power from a single well as the traditional method - that is pretty neat.
This isn't about a radically new concept, but a radically new implementation - and a rather large "incremental" gain.
No way! (Score:2)
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You can convert heat into energy? Whodda thunk it?
Actually you can only convert heat into energy if you also have a source of cold.
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You can convert heat into energy? Whodda thunk it?
Actually you can only convert heat into energy if you also have a source of cold.
Isn't heat a relative term, so isn't that implicit? Nobody said they would convert ambient into energy. I think that the term heat implies cold.
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You can convert heat into energy? Whodda thunk it?
Actually you can only convert heat into energy if you also have a source of cold.
That's a very bizarre way to phrase it, but yeah, we can retrieve energy from a heat difference, but not heat itself. I'm sure everyone has heard of entropy.
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You can't convert heat into energy. Heat is already energy!
That's odd. I come to the opposite conclusion. Namely, that you can do the conversion precisely because it is trivial.
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Ok, modify what the parent probably intended with "useful energy". A flowing river is in motion but isn't going to turn our tvs on. But convert that motion energy into electrical energy and then we can use it with our current infrastructure.
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But convert that motion energy into electrical energy and then we can use it with our current infrastructure.
Our "current" infrastructure? Hahahahaha
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A member of a superset cannot be converted into that superset, nor can a superset be converted into one of its members.
YOu can, however, convert one member of a set into another member of the set.
It's trying to make a redundant change. Without a difference between before and after, there is no delta.
It's much the same as trying to stop a car that's already parked.
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needed to head off next supervolcano? (Score:5, Interesting)
There are a few supervolcanoes around the world. Yellowstone has been going off about every 3/4 million years for around 20 milllion years, and it's due. Toba nearly wiped out humanity 75000 years ago. Can we do anything about it? Defuse them by sucking all the power out of them with geothermal energy extraction?
Re:needed to head off next supervolcano? (Score:4, Insightful)
There are a few supervolcanoes around the world. Yellowstone has been going off about every 3/4 million years for around 20 milllion years, and it's due. Toba nearly wiped out humanity 75000 years ago. Can we do anything about it? Defuse them by sucking all the power out of them with geothermal energy extraction?
No. Luckily, we can't. Also worth noting that tidal power plants won't eliminate tsunamis, wind power won't prevent hurricanes and solar power isn't going to reduce skin cancer. And more importantly, if any of those were likely to have such drastic effects then it would be a really really Bad Thing to Do.
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If we were talking about shallow geothermal fields, as opposed to supervolcano magma reservoirs, then it's a real concern. Geologist PÃll Stefansson in Iceland has been trying to get across to people that a typical geothermal area in Iceland might only last on the order of 50 years and would not re-warm on a human timescale.
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I am no way near as smart as a volcanist ( sp?) but I would think that the concept would work as a power defuser ( as you mentioned ) but yet over time, you would create a champagne cork, it might pop when the earth choose to burp and there is not a flexible surface ( right now it's flexible but if you take the energy out of it, you would reduce it's flexibility.)
Re:needed to head off next supervolcano? (Score:4, Funny)
Isn't that what they call archeologists on Vulcan? /duck
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*smack*
You owe me a clean screen and keyboard. I'd JUST taken a drink of coffee. You have any idea how much my nasal passages hurt now?
Re:needed to head off next supervolcano? (Score:4, Funny)
Was the coffee hot enough to be used as an energy source?
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A coolant loop will conduct far more Watt for a given temperature gradient than the crust, the problem is the scale.
Re:needed to head off next supervolcano? (Score:5, Interesting)
I was speaking to a real vulcanologist that works at Mt St Helens a while ago. The current thinking is it's not so much the heat energy alone as gas buildup that causes these massive eruptions. The heat is apparently a small part of it but the amount of gases dissolved in the material is what tends to make eruptions happen. When there's not enough gas in the material, it stops erupting, they now think.
It sounds to me as though major eruptions are kind of like what happens when you shake a soda then pop the lid while the constant bubbling ones such as we see at St Helens lately is more like what happens when the carbonation just bubbles and your straw slowly climbs out of the glass. The conversation was one of those "well, duh!" moments to me that once you're told about it the whole thing makes so much more sense than before. When I said so, he laughed and said much the same thing happened to him when his colleague came up with it.
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Yellowstone has been going off about every 3/4 million years for around 20 milllion years, and it's due.
Say what you will about the Precambrian, but at least they made the supervolcanoes run on time.
Stop cooling magma (Score:3, Funny)
Please, stop cooling magma. No more viscous magna means no more earth magnetic field, hence no more magnetic shield, ie no more life.
Please, don't dig for geothermic energy. Leave alone our earth kernel.
Re:Stop cooling magma (Score:4, Insightful)
Meanwhile, try this thought experiment: throw an ice cube into a swimming pool full of boiling oatmeal and see how much the melting ice cube affects the temperature of the oatmeal. Now scale that up by a factor of, say, ten million.
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now drop ten thousand ice cubes into your pool and watch the temperature dip slightly.
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Is your pool the size of the Indian Ocean? If not you're still quite a few orders of magnitude low.
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i thought radioactive decay was the source of the heat in the earth core, so the pool analogy doesn't work unless you add a heater.
Re:Stop cooling magma (Score:5, Informative)
Please, stop cooling magma. No more viscous magna means no more earth magnetic field, hence no more magnetic shield, ie no more life.
Please, don't dig for geothermic energy. Leave alone our earth kernel.
Now let's do some math.
Mass of the earth: 5.9*10^24 kg. Apart from a very thin shell on top, most of that is at a couple of thousand degrees kelvin.
Magma has a much higher specific heat, but let's be conservative and assume all of earth has the same specific heat as iron, or about 460 J/kg
Cooling the earth by a single degree will release about 2.75*10^27 joules
The total world energy consumption from all sources in 2008 was estimated [wikipedia.org] at 4.75*10^20 joules.
At that rate, cooling the interior of the earth by a single degree would power the entire world for 5,789,473 years.
And that's assuming the earth doesn't continue to generate heat from radioactive decay, tidal forces, friction etc.
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Maybe you weren't (assuming you're the AC) but from looking at this thread lots of other people seem to think that's an actual concern.
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on top of the fact that magma close enough to the surface for us to meddle with is has basically left the core, and is no longer relevant to the magnetic field.
One milllyun dohllarrrs! (Score:2)
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You do know that energy consumption goes beyond just oil, right?
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Please, stop cooling magma
Seriously, this is just not cool.
Dwarf fortress (Score:2)
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In Canada, we call -10C "spring".
Cakes! (Score:2)
That will allow them to bake a lot of pretty cakes!
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Wrong cake.
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There was no cake, because of what you did to your companion cube.
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Right cake.
Earthquakes (Score:3)
I guess Iceland's made its peace with geological instability (one would think you'd have to, by definition), but other geothermal efforts around the world are being halted or seriously delayed because of earthquakes they are believed to have caused:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/11/science/earth/11basel.html [nytimes.com]
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I believe the issue with those projects relates to deep bedrock fracturing rather than energy extraction itself. Small mini-eathquakes have also been known to occur near fracturing efforts in the name of natural gas extraction, though those are mostly shallow enough that I don't think they caused effects like the geothermal project in Basel.
Prior art (Score:2)
magma can act as a potent new source of geothermal energy powerful enough to heat 25,000 to 30,000 homes.
Actually this has been known about for quite some time, particularly by the people who lived here [wikipedia.org], albeit briefly...
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Liquid magma? (Score:5, Insightful)
As opposed to what? Solid magma is more commonly called "rock".
Re:Liquid magma? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Liquid magma? (Score:4, Informative)
magma
n pl -mas, -mata
1. (Physics / General Physics) a paste or suspension consisting of a finely divided solid dispersed in a liquid
2. (Earth Sciences / Geological Science) hot molten rock, usually formed in the earth's upper mantle, some of which finds its way into the crust and onto the earth's surface, where it solidifies to form igneous rock
Collins English Dictionary
A plastic or paste. And, of course, you knew that magma could have a range of viscosity from cumbly-looking rhyolite-forming magmas ( Vesuvius, Krakatoa, Mount St. Helens) to fountain-like basalt forming lavas (Hawaiian volcanoes).
Lighting with ava lamps? (Score:2)
One Hot Pipe (Score:2)
The trick must be in keeping whatever gets close enough to the magma from melting. It will be quite a feat.
Re: One Hot Pipe (Score:5, Insightful)
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Magma at these depths is not generally hot enough to melt steel.
Overheard at the dig site... (Score:2)
It's all lava (Score:3, Informative)
Re: all geothermal energy comes from lava (Score:2)
Summary: (Score:2)
LTTH (Score:5, Funny)
Yes! Instead of lots of inneficient conversion methods, and n orer to overcome the last mile problem, this would finally allow the deployment of Lava To The Home technology, through some simple piping.
Besides heating, hot lava could be used in special taps to allow for inexpensive 3D printing, allowing everyone to produce their own custo made Rock Consumer Appliances.
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Rock Consumer Appliances.
Rock smashes Consumer, Consumer buys Appliance, Appliance.. prototypes Rock!
The Icelanders dug too greedily and too deep. (Score:4, Funny)
You know what they awoke in the darknesss of Eyjafjallajokull.
Re:The Icelanders dug too greedily and too deep. (Score:5, Funny)
You know what they awoke in the darknesss of Eyjafjallajokull.
Björk?
Iceland = Saudi Arabia (Score:3, Interesting)
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And if that doesn't work, open up the nation as a theme park called Magmaland.
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You have to be kidding. There are MANY more places on this planet with loads more geo-thermal. However, for the number of ppl on the island, it is a lot.
With that said, my bet is that unless EU starts putting in pipes that can deal with H2, then an H2 project will NEVER go anywhere.
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You should ask Alcoa what they think of your idea...
Sure, you could bulldoze the country, and make it a major energy supplier to the world (though many others are in contention, too) but the icelandic people have said no to much smaller projects before, and its likely they wouldn't stand for wholesale destruction of their country to achieve that status.
That Magma is very Close (Score:3, Informative)
It's a wonderful idea (and don't get me wrong, we use geothermal energy in NZ [it's around 5% of our power generation]) but the inherent danger of magma is that if you make one little error you're dealing with MAGMA!!!
it's the second most hostile energy source after nuclear energy, the only difference is the half life isn't thousands of years.
oh! and 7000 is little more than 2 kilometres, that's really, really, really close for magma (the other way to look at it is that it's a very, very, very think mantle on the Earth near Iceland). Most other estiamtes of the Earth's mantle are ~=50-60 Km's vs. 3% of the average thickness beneath Iceland.
Good luck to Iceland!
Exports? (Score:2)
I want to see the harbor where they load this stuff into the boats..
Unintended consequences again.... (Score:2)
What happens if every nation, all over the planet, eventually follows Iceland's lead and taps magma below the crust for heat to convert to energy? Will drawing off so much heat accelerate the eventual cooling of the Earth's core and thus the senescence of the magnetosphere, thus accelerating the end of all life on Earth? How much heat can we manage to draw off if we "go geo"? Is the consequence so far off in the future that it is inconsequential? Humans once thought that tapping aquifers and petroleum w
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YellowStone (Score:2)
Dumb question (Score:2)
Then of course, the magma comes up hot enough to melt iron. This could give a nice way to create a smelter for iron, or even for concrete.
Magma is dangerous, hmmmmkay? (Score:2)
If minecraft has taught me anything, it is that hitting magma unexpectedly is a Very Bad Thing.
I sincerely hope that they had a bucket of water handy to put themselves out, and that they weren't foolish enough to be digging the block they were standing on when they hit magma.
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I was thinking more like Volcano in New York or something equally as stupid.
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The day after tomorrow?
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>>>the Icarus planet was filled with naquadria. However in SG:Atlantis they did blow up a planet from using too much geothermal.
I don't remember SGA's geothermal planet? It seems geothermal would COOL the planet into a cold rock like Pluto, rather than make it go boom. (shrug)
But I do remember is SGU's first episode where the Stargate pulled so much energy dialing across ~1000 galaxies that it went "boom". That's a hell of a distance. The closest galaxy is ~2 million lightyears, so hopping 1000
Re:SGU Icarus Planet (Score:5, Funny)
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Actually, it was the planet that blew up, not the gate. (draining huge amounts of raw energy from the core of an already unstable planet is bound to have serious consequences) The stargates themselves are nearly impossible to destroy, so the Icarus gate is probably still floating in the planetary debris field.
Re:Also (Score:5, Insightful)
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If buffalos were meant to fly, they would have buffalo wings.
Man have buffalo wings, therefore man were meant to fly.
QED
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And what, put the brilliant minds of the Wright brothers to waste?
I could use the same argument for the human genius that let us invent an airplane and not need wings to fly.
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cool link
"Extort" (Score:3)
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means [youtube.com].
Re:What could possibly go wrong? (Score:4, Insightful)
We are on a living planet.
No, we're not. Stop it already with the "living planet" bullshit. The Earth is a geologically active lump of rock and metal, with a very thin layer of life on the crust. The planet itself is not alive in even the loosest scientific definition of "life".
Anthropomorphizing (Score:3, Insightful)
People who like to think they are 'green' , often try to imbue inanimate objects with living traits.
It is pretty sad they have no real concepts about the most basic issues. Sure, there are some
lifeforms on Earth, but that does not make the planet living, it is merely dynamic.
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Happy to say, this particular 'green' credits a scientific grounding for his views. That, and the belief that "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure," or something to that effect.
That said, I also am an active participant in human activities, so I have become familiar with the habit of using hyperbole or analogy without quite realizing it. So when I hear someone say the 'Earth is a living system' I know what they mean, even if I wouldn't say it quite that way myself. Then when I go on to reply to
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Frankly, I have a lot of respect for those people who feel an emotional, tangible, and personified connection to life and the Earth as a whole. They may be flaky and sentimental by some estimations, but at least they have not cut themselves off from the natural world.
Exactly, a friend and I were discussing the merits of solar panels and he said: "but I'd rather not be at the mercy of nature", of course when I informed him that he already was, I was just getting semantic, but I can't help but feel that this is a very real perceptual disconnect that a lot of us (myself included) have developed, we feel that we have already moved beyond the "natural" world, and are no longer at it's "mercy". But we don't have too deeply to see that we are still and always will be sustained
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But we don't have * too deeply to see that we are still and always will be sustained by (somewhat fragile) natural processes that are either impossible or difficult to control, direct or even predict.
* look
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People who like to think they are 'green' , often try to imbue inanimate objects with living traits.
It is pretty sad they have no real concepts about the most basic issues. Sure, there are some
lifeforms on Earth, but that does not make the planet living, it is merely dynamic.
People who I like to think are 'red' !(complimentary to green), often like to lump disparate opinions and people together into a group, this way they can attack the weakest opinion of said group. It's pretty sad that they would rather spend their time doing this than addressing the real concerns held by the rational members of said group. Sure there are some lifeforms on earth, but who gives a fuck, we'll just argue semantics.
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Home heating is supplied in the more traditional "really hot water" method...so electricity isn't needed for that. Still 1KW is NOT much power for a home unless there is a substantial reserve power system and the typical Iceland power user is somewhat miserly in the first place.
Re:Please check my logic (Score:5, Insightful)
The human harvesting of geothermal energy is totally insignificant compared to natural cooling over the entire surface of the earth.
Re:Please check my logic (Score:4, Informative)
Unless they're drilling a hole >3000km deep to tap into the iron-nickel liquid core of the Earth where the Earth's magnetic field is generated, the effect will be irrelevant. And that's leaving aside the fact that it's technically impossible to drill to such depths (the deepest wells barely exceed 10km). Besides, at most you're slightly accelerating the natural process of water circulating in the crust and the normal process of the Earth cooling -- at one teeny-tiny spot compared to, say, the entire mid-oceanic ridge system, which is naturally pumping water through the crust in the vicinity of magma chambers all the time and has been for eons.
Your logic is flawed because you have not considered scale. Total heat flux is estimated at 42TW [wikipedia.org], and there are ~40GW of geothermal heating and electricity generation. Even if we scaled up geothermal heating by a hundred times or more it wouldn't matter much. All we're doing is drawing the heat out a little faster in small areas, which wouldn't effect the Earth on a broad scale for many millions of years, if there was any effect at all. The Earth is big, and heat flow is remarkably slow within it (rocks are good thermal insulators). It's difficult to perturb heat flow except very locally by artificial means. And generally speaking the areas tapped for geothermal power already have elevated heat flows anyway.
You should worry more about wind turbines affecting weather patterns. At least that might have a plausible basis.
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"Eyeing" is not a verb.
You fail English. "He eyes the bitch from across the bar, and makes his move."
How about writing english that can be understood everywhere in the world?
Huh? How about using the language as it's designed? What do different locales have to do with whether it's proper English? Why am I arguing with someone who won't respond?
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