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Iceland Eyes Liquid Magma As Energy Source
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."
Sci Fi comes true once again.
But it's a dry heat!!
How profound, we can heat water with magma.
Got Code?
You can convert heat into energy? Whodda thunk it?
Volcanic eruptions, why invite disaster?
This is old news ... didn't Prof. Farnsworth do this in Futurama, to bring back Fry's dog (i.e. use magma as a power source).
</troll>
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The extent which the human race extorts the earth sees no bounds!
Does any one else see why this might be an issue? We are on a living planet.
It seems all we want to do is extort whatever we can from it, what do we leave behind?
Get away from your computer and go for a walk in nature, if you can find any semblance of it in your area. It wont be there much longer..
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?
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
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.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crack_in_the_World
Duh, someone's been playing Dwarf Fortress for too long on that small island. Well, I guess there's not much else to do in the wintertime (disclaimer: it's below -10C where i live now, so I'd better not pull their leg like this).
My first program:
Hell Segmentation fault
(conversation between scientists in Iceland): You know, I've been a frickin' evil doctor for 30 frickin' years, OK? Cut me some frickin' slack. You forget, we're in a volcano. We're surrounded by liquid hot magma.
sysadmins and parents of newborns get the same amount of sleep.
That will allow them to bake a lot of pretty cakes!
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
I think it's adapted from a really big Jello mold: http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/Episode_215:_Power_Erupts
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
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, albeit briefly...
As opposed to the solid or gaseous variety?
Today's headline is brought to you by the Department of Redundancy Department.
As opposed to what? Solid magma is more commonly called "rock".
Sorry, I couldn't stop myself.
Obi-Wan: "I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were sudden
Psh, Dwarf Fortress has been powering the world with magma long before Minecraft appeared on the scene, grasshopper.
Supporter of the +1 Over Dramatic mod option. In memory of apk.
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
The trick must be in keeping whatever gets close enough to the magma from melting. It will be quite a feat.
They will be demanding ONE MILLION DOLLARS...and sharks with freak'n laser beams...
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
This was done in Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri a decade ago. This isn't a breakthough, this is just "Thermal Boreholes" finally coming to fruition. Another concept inspired by computer games.
Professor! Lava! Hot!
The article says that the magma well could be used to produce 25 megawatts of power. My first (unconsidered) reaction was that more homes should be served by such a power system. Then I did the math, and I realized that 25,000 homes using 25 megawatts of power is just 1000 watts per home. That's less than the power consumed by a hair dryer. Plus, they're in Iceland, and they need to heat their homes. It's a pretty intimidating concept.
All geothermal energy comes from lava, it's just a matter of how directly you tap the heat. Heat engines run more efficiently with a higher heat difference, but they have to be designed/constructed to -use- that higher heat. If you cool the lava it will solidify into rock, and your expensive lava to electric generator stops working till you drill down to lava again. A lava generator is cheaper to build but has a shorter life span.
Are you Icelandic or retarded?
it can power forges and smelters. expect iceland's metal barrel production to increase exponentially.
There's some steamy hot action going in Iceland where Mother Earth shows her finest. The Icelanders sure know of f-loving, it's a two-way action on a bed of pure lava. Get your drills ready it's time to go supercritical with magma e-lectric!
And then they will set up a masonry and make 50 beds. Then they will set up 100 stone fall traps around the entrance to their fortress. I don't know why they named it Iceland though, that has no anus in it.
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.
Tapping geothermal energy cools the earth's center faster, which slows magma rotation, which reduces the strength of the magnetic field protecting us from cosmic radiation, does it not? I'm sure this wouldn't bite us for many years, but this seems like a bad direction, just as using fossil fuels was.
Yes it's a new source. The old one is water extracted from geothermally active areas, although the water is very hot because of the magma being nearby.
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.
-><- no
This happened to me in Minecraft.
Have we learned nothing from history? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferno_(Doctor_Who)
Magma ? Energy ? Really ? No !? Wow, you think we can get energy from red hot magma. I mean, we've been using GEOTHERMAL for decades, what possible use could Magma have ?
I will commence my project to extract ENERGY from the CENTER OF THE EARTH unless the governments of the world pay me . . . ONE MILLYUN DOHLLARRS!
You know what they awoke in the darknesss of Eyjafjallajokull.
Iceland could be the Saudi Arabia of the Hydrogen Economy: An island nation, w/practically unlimited geothermal energy--with which desalinate seawater; and for making electricity to break the molecular bonds of all that H2O.
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!
Regards Sinesurfer A Nerd is someone who lives for technology, A Geek is someone who lives for technology and loves it
"Eyeing" is not a verb. How about writing english that can be understood everywhere in the world?
Iceland is considering liquid magma as an energy source
No confusion there.
It isn't strictly true that all geothermal energy comes from lava. Some of the 'hot rocks' style geothermal projects are tapping heat that has been at least in part produced by radioactive decay of Uranium, Thorium and Potassium. Of course, that means they also have a limited life span, because they will be exhausting heat faster than it is produced.
I want to see the harbor where they load this stuff into the boats..
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
It's 2011 - how many unheated homes are left in Iceland?!?!
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 was like having liquid VISA gift cards with no obligation to repay, but we now know the piper expects to be paid for those. The price for this little stunt, however far off the maturity of the loan, might be greater than anything else we've done.
I thought Iceland was the one country that already had a surplus. Are they looking to add 30,000 new homes? I suppose they could make methane, combining hydrogen from sea water with atmospheric CO2, and fill up LNG ships, but had they wanted to do that, they would be.
YellowStone is showing signs of eruption. Now, would be a great time to consider the idea of taking the pressure off by actually using the magma to run a LARGE power plant.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Can this be pulled up and used to form bricks? And how hard is Igneous Rock? The magma COULD be poured into shapes. For example, comes from home wool insulation comes from basalt. Or how about bricks?
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.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Chuck Norris doesn't heat his home with natural gas, he uses liquid magma
They hit magma while digging? Ouch.
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.
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.
The USA will make a claim when oil runs out for magma. Been there, done that drilled here dept.
All cows eat grass!
A hot-water spa in Iceland using the waste water from a geothermal power station, its intake is 2000 meters down. Great place, I was surprised to find that the water is salty, at about 1/3 the salinity of ocean water.
If you fly trans-Atlantic, make a stopover in Iceland and spend a day at that spa. It's worth it.
I wouldn't, as heat already is a form of energy.
A Canadian company called Magma Energy just bought a majority share in one of Iceland's power companies. I think someone is confused. There have been no news in Iceland on this subject.
It's a power source AND a good home defense system, all in one! Just don't forget which lever controls it...
Whatever you do, just don't dare try to do this.
I RTA, and thought it funny how this is the same nation that was building that humongous damn project to get their energy from, and then it hit me, maybe it was the same project, that they now had to sideline because of the magma flow, can anyone tell me if this is the case, I saw the project on mega machines, where they showed the damn being built and was a world wonder in terms of architectural integrity, but also construction (special machines designed for just this job), I wanted to know if anyone could pinpoint the project that was sidelined...
The potential has been known about for a long time. Help get the world off fossils and support this technology...
http://www.magma-power.com/