The U.S. and Google among the supporters of an ambitious project that hopes to remove the concerns with regard to geothermal experiments
A group of scientists in Seattle Altarock Energy and Davenport Newberry Holdings LLC has announced plans to scale huge: pump 24 million gallons of water in the wall of a dormant volcano in Oregon, the hope is that the water will return to hot surface, to the point where it can be used to generate clean energy and economic, with no side effects due to explosion or the magma that flows from active volcanoes.
It is an ambitious experiment would return attention to geothermal resources, which have been set aside for the high number of technical issues to be addressed and for fear of generating earthquakes. In fact people try to turn into heat energy contained in the earth's crust for more than a century, but most of the phenomena has already been exploited, the new frontier of the rocks are hot but they do not have cracks or openings.
To stimulate this heat engineers are developing a new technology called Enhanced Geothermal System: consists of implanting depth of the wells in the rock and use it to pump water inside, creating narrow fractures, a process known as "hydroshearing". While cold water is pumped from the tanks, the steam is extracted from the crust.
The doubts over the process dell'EGS are not only related to the risk of earthquakes (as has happened in Arkansas and Ohio), but also to the difficulty of creating a reservoir large enough to support the opening of a station. No coincidence that in business there are only a couple of small power plants in France and Germany (and a third, then closed, Switzerland).
Why then is back to talk about volcanoes? Why AltaRock has developed a new technology to build larger tanks built ecologically, and Newberry claims to be able to apply the system dell'EGS volcanic rock.
A challenge at this point, has attracted investments of the Department of Energy of the United States, which are investing $ 21.5 million, and some private investors among which is the name of Google (with 6.3 million) . For 21 days will pump 800 gallons of water AltaRock per minute. If the saying is correct - "drop hollows out the rock" - the cold water will dig deeper and deeper.
If the volcano in Oregon may or may not mark a significant milestone in the development of green energy sources, you will see, what is certain is that the concerns are many: the government will monitor every action, and is already in a table which is evaluating all the possible issues to prevent the action of the pump is stopped. AltaRock has provided virtually no risk of earthquakes, but have placed the project in an area completely away from human presence is a guarantee for some not very reassuring.
A group of scientists in Seattle Altarock Energy and Davenport Newberry Holdings LLC has announced plans to scale huge: pump 24 million gallons of water in the wall of a dormant volcano in Oregon, the hope is that the water will return to hot surface, to the point where it can be used to generate clean energy and economic, with no side effects due to explosion or the magma that flows from active volcanoes.
It is an ambitious experiment would return attention to geothermal resources, which have been set aside for the high number of technical issues to be addressed and for fear of generating earthquakes. In fact people try to turn into heat energy contained in the earth's crust for more than a century, but most of the phenomena has already been exploited, the new frontier of the rocks are hot but they do not have cracks or openings.
To stimulate this heat engineers are developing a new technology called Enhanced Geothermal System: consists of implanting depth of the wells in the rock and use it to pump water inside, creating narrow fractures, a process known as "hydroshearing". While cold water is pumped from the tanks, the steam is extracted from the crust.
The doubts over the process dell'EGS are not only related to the risk of earthquakes (as has happened in Arkansas and Ohio), but also to the difficulty of creating a reservoir large enough to support the opening of a station. No coincidence that in business there are only a couple of small power plants in France and Germany (and a third, then closed, Switzerland).
Why then is back to talk about volcanoes? Why AltaRock has developed a new technology to build larger tanks built ecologically, and Newberry claims to be able to apply the system dell'EGS volcanic rock.
A challenge at this point, has attracted investments of the Department of Energy of the United States, which are investing $ 21.5 million, and some private investors among which is the name of Google (with 6.3 million) . For 21 days will pump 800 gallons of water AltaRock per minute. If the saying is correct - "drop hollows out the rock" - the cold water will dig deeper and deeper.
If the volcano in Oregon may or may not mark a significant milestone in the development of green energy sources, you will see, what is certain is that the concerns are many: the government will monitor every action, and is already in a table which is evaluating all the possible issues to prevent the action of the pump is stopped. AltaRock has provided virtually no risk of earthquakes, but have placed the project in an area completely away from human presence is a guarantee for some not very reassuring.