Geothermal is like a nuclear power plant without the radioactive wastes; NOVA on Solar #33 Earth's Energy Future
Archimedes Plutonium
comes the Sun" only don't hold me to that.
Anyway, it was obvious to me that this NOVA show
forgot or missed geothermal. And whereas all the other
renewables of Sun, wind, algae, ethanol, all of those
are never going to replace coal and oil, nor do they have the
potential of replacing coal and oil, NOVA forgot to mention the
biggest renewable of all, and of
all time-- Earth's mantle in the form of geothermal and
Volcanoes.
Volcanoes have the potential of literally pushing aside all of coal
and oil energy. Just as gasoline pushed aside "whale lamp-oil" and
kerosene, the Volcanoes
on Earth have the potential of pushing aside the entire
oil and coal industries.
If the world had it in mind to go all out on engineering Mt. Etna and
the Hawaii Islands et al, by building as many electric power stations
as humanely possible, within several years we would no longer need to
use any petrol nor any coal.
The mantle of Earth is always hot due to radioactivity
inside of Earth and the gravitational force.
So it is rather funny that NOVA neglects the world's finest renewable
energy source-- Volcanoes. Of course
we can drill where there are no Volcanoes.
And it is rather sad that Denmark has not started a drilling project
for geothermal as has France. Because
Denmark could use its wind power to drill geothermals to create
electric stations.
But on the NOVA show it showed a array of mirrors in the desert
outside Los Angeles that heated oil in pipes
which then turned water into steam.
So I wonder, if those pipes can withstand the heat if placed near the
Hawaii lava flows?
And I wonder if there is a better design to make steam from lava
flows? Would it be better to have hood fans
and to spray water on the lava flow and then the steam would go into
the hood fans? And as the lava cools then stick into the lava the
crucible pipes to make steam in that manner.
And as we build thousands of generators in the Hawaii
volcanoes, that they become cooler and thus able
to build even more generators.
I am picturing a sort of mobile generators so that they
can be moved and repositioned in the lava fields.
I suppose on Mt. Etna the slope would be more of a problem than the
heat. But once thousands of generators are positioned around Mt.Etna
that more can be constructed and positioned due to the lowering
of the heat temperature.
I am guessing that Mt. Etna maybe able to furnish
all the electricity for all of Europe alone. And if not, well
there is Vesuvius and several other volcanoes.
I suspect Iceland has not tapped into all the geothermals that it
possesses.
So once the Volcano Electric Power Stations gets going, it will
replace the coal and oil industries and make them a fossil or antique
way of energy supply.
And most people will be happy when they are gone because, quite
frankly, they were horribly or terribly dirty.
Most everyone claims how horrible it is for global warming and climate
change, but few people ever
complain that during the 20th century and up until
2009 was the world's most dirtiest air worldwide that
the animals on this planet ever lived through. The world's worst air
pollution was endured by every human
who lived from the 20th century to this date. Air filled with lead,
mercury, carcinogens, pesticides, herbicides, heavy metals, benzene,
you name it. And no wonder the 20th and 21st centuries had the worst
health maladies ever known with Alzheimers, Parkinsons, Prion,
Schizophrenia, and the cancers
and lung diseases.
If you wanted to live a life in which you can say you
breathed clean air during your life, well, you would not have wished
you lived during 1900 through 2009.
And that is probably the best gift of Volcano Electricity
in that it will finally clean the air of Earth to its former
pristine state where it truly was clean.
Archimedes Plutonium
www.iw.net/~a_plutonium
whole entire Universe is just one big atom
where dots of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies
Kevin B.
The pipes take the heat from relatively near the surface. They don't cool
the liquid pool of magma deep within. So you're speeding up the contracting
and hardening of the volcano crust without relieving the pressure within.
Might not that increase the risk of a catastrophic eruption and massive
failure of the volcano crust?
Bob Eld
"Archimedes Plutonium" <plutonium....@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:d3cc04f7-c419-4b4a...@j19g2000yqk.googlegroups.com...
Geothermal is no panacea. It sound good until you look a little closer. The
biggest problem is that the thermal conductivity of rock plus it's thermal
capacity is piss poor. That's why one can walk on lava just a few hours
after it has flowed. A few inches of solidified rock will insulate the 2000
degree molten rock below from the cooled surface. It's also why snow and ice
can exist on the flanks of active volcanoes and why the earth's surface is
not sensibly warm from the heat below. Placing pipes or heat collectors into
magma or lava would be very problematic because any working fluid would cool
the magma in the region of the pipes forming an insulating layer of
solidified rock, inches thick cutting of the useful flow of heat to the
pipes.
Most if not all geothermal plants take advantage of natural hot water or
injected water that becomes hot in the heat producing zone. The hot rock in
these zones have to be permeable to water and the resultant steam. Again,
just injecting water into magma will cool the magma and seal off the heat
producing zone. Furthermore the water would have to be injected at pressures
higher than the formation pressure creating it's own set of problems. The
resultant steam is full of mineral and noxious gases such as SO2 that must
be dealt with. For these reasons geothermal plants are not ubiquitous but
usually take advantage of special conditions of hot ground water in a few
special locations. Secondly these plants are never high powered, thousands
of megawatts like a nuclear or coal plants, but at best, are usually only a
few megawatts because of the above problems. Unless there are some
breakthroughs, I can't imagine geothermal ever becoming a major contributer.
Archimedes Plutonium
Correction, the title of NOVA's was "Saved by the Sun" and not "Here
comes the Sun".
As to Kevin's thoughts, noone knows what will happen as because noone
has
ever tried to tame and exploit a Volcano.
I believe I addressed this question by saying that we build many small
portable and
moveable generators and we dip into the hot lava with crucible-like-
pipes. So as we
fill up a lava site with hundreds to thousands of these portable
generators, we cool
down the underlying Volcanic lava. I gave the analogy that of ants
cannot singularly
pull down a larger animal unless you have numbers of ants in the
thousands that
conquers a larger animal.
In the NOVA show they talked about the Solar Generator in the Mojave
desert outside
Los Angeles powering some 150,000 homes and they showed a plastic
pipeline with oil
that was heated to 700 degrees F. But the Volcano generators will deal
with alot more
steam and I suspect the pipes for Volcanoes would have to be of some
heat resistant
metal.
Now the NOVA show also spoke of the transmission line loss, and that
Las Vegas
Nevada was going to build their own Solar Generator near the city. So
transmission
from Hawaii to the mainland maybe a problem in loss, but considering
that
all the electricity produced by the volcanoes is "free energy and
clean energy". Maybe
the loss in such a long transmission to California from Hawaii is not
so bad considering
how much more electricity that those volcanoes can yield. But if the
transmission loss
is too large, then I would consider the electrolysis of water on
Hawaii and to ship the
Hydrogen and Oxygen gases to the mainland of USA.
I wonder also, whether a conversion of electricity into lasers and
then back to electricity
is feasible. I remember Tesla was working on the idea of transmission
without lines
and whether we have come to a step in history where Tesla's idea maybe
reachable.
Also, in the NOVA they spoke of wanting to reach 20% of all USA energy
from solar
by 2025 or thereabouts and said it was unlikely. Well, if the USA went
for Volcano
energy, then I would say be 2025, it is conceivable to have all of USA
powered by
Volcano electricity using Hawaii, Yellowstone, and various other
geothermal spots
in the USA. I think Arkansas has some geothermal sites.
What the NOVA show was poor in conveying is the idea that geothermal
is the king of
renewable energy for it is even more dependable than the Sun and it is
vastly more
concentrated. So the NOVA show was highly biased and propagandized
with Solar
when it is Geothermal that is going to save the day for future energy.
Geothermal, once it gets going has the chance of making oil and coal
obsolete in a
short order of time.
And I hope someone in Asia, where they move faster on technology and
engineering than
here in the West where they are faced with political knots, can take
one of those
Asian volcanoes and turn their country into a Volcano powered society
where the
electricity is virtually unlimited. We in the West move to slow. Take
for example the
Obama health care overall. What should be done there, if I were
president, on day one
I would declare the system corrupt and obselete and by Executive Order
call an end to
all health care packages in the entire USA. On day two I would say
that the USA health
care is to be modeled after the Canadian, or one of the other
countries who have a better
system than the USA. I would bypass and override all of Congress and
by Executive Order
initiate a new Health System. Our political system is more unhealthy
with sclerosis of the
body than is the Health System itself, both are sick, and we cannot
expect two sick
entities to fix either one. If China had the problem of health care
that the USA has, it would
have fixed it in 2 days, with executive orders. Here in the USA we
have been fighting this
health care problem for 20 years with nothing to show for.
So will the USA be the first to poke a tube into a Volcano attached to
a power generator
and harness electricity? Probably not. Probably some foreign country
like Iceland or
Italy with Mt. Etna or Indonesia. Or perhaps New Zealand with all
their geothermals.
On NOVA next week promises to talk about a dying Volcano of Mt.
Kilimanjaro, the world's
largest volcano. So can Kilimanjaro have tubes inserted hooked up to a
power generator?
Archimedes Plutonium
Bob Eld wrote:
> "Archimedes Plutonium" <plutonium....@gmail.com> wrote in message
>
> Geothermal is no panacea. It sound good until you look a little closer. The
> biggest problem is that the thermal conductivity of rock plus it's thermal
> capacity is piss poor. That's why one can walk on lava just a few hours
Bob, use some commonsense before acting like a whining skeptic. Lava
is
hot with huge amounts of energy. This is able to be exploited. Plus,
the fact
that one needs not drill very far down in order to get more geothermal
energy.
In other words, we save on drilling.
> after it has flowed. A few inches of solidified rock will insulate the 2000
> degree molten rock below from the cooled surface. It's also why snow and ice
> can exist on the flanks of active volcanoes and why the earth's surface is
> not sensibly warm from the heat below. Placing pipes or heat collectors into
> magma or lava would be very problematic because any working fluid would cool
> the magma in the region of the pipes forming an insulating layer of
> solidified rock, inches thick cutting of the useful flow of heat to the
> pipes.
>
> Most if not all geothermal plants take advantage of natural hot water or
> injected water that becomes hot in the heat producing zone. The hot rock in
> these zones have to be permeable to water and the resultant steam. Again,
> just injecting water into magma will cool the magma and seal off the heat
> producing zone. Furthermore the water would have to be injected at pressures
You don't know that, since noone has ever tried it. That is why I say
start out with
small portable generators and see how the volcano is able to be tamed
by adding
more portable generators.
> higher than the formation pressure creating it's own set of problems. The
> resultant steam is full of mineral and noxious gases such as SO2 that must
> be dealt with. For these reasons geothermal plants are not ubiquitous but
The crucible tubes I am talking about are like the Mojave Solar
Generator that
has oil filled plastic tubes that have no contact with the water tanks
that turn into
steam. So the water has no contact with the lava.
> usually take advantage of special conditions of hot ground water in a few
> special locations. Secondly these plants are never high powered, thousands
> of megawatts like a nuclear or coal plants, but at best, are usually only a
> few megawatts because of the above problems. Unless there are some
> breakthroughs, I can't imagine geothermal ever becoming a major contributer.
A thousand generators on Hawaii each producing what the Mojave solar
generator
produces to supply the electricity to 150,000 homes is 1,000 x 150,000
= 150 million
or 1/2 of all the USA. If the Hawaii volcanoes were located in Kansas,
in the middle
of the mainland USA, our energy future is solved at once and for as
long as Earth
revolves around the Sun. Because if Kansas had the Hawaii volcanoes we
would
have thousands of tiny power stations and our transmission lines would
feed
every city from Seattle to Miami and Boston to San Diego and all
points in between.
zzbu...@netscape.net
<plutonium.archime...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Tonight NOVA had a repeat on Solar Energy. I think the title was "Here
> comes the Sun" only don't hold me to that.
>
> Anyway, it was obvious to me that this NOVA show
> forgot or missed geothermal. And whereas all the other
> renewables of Sun, wind, algae, ethanol, all of those
> are never going to replace coal and oil, nor do they have the
> potential of replacing coal and oil, NOVA forgot to mention the
> biggest renewable of all, and of
> all time-- Earth's mantle in the form of geothermal and
> Volcanoes.
Well, engineering-wise Geothermal has always been left to
scienists,
since what all proposed systems have in common is rain rather than
engineering.