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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."
How profound, we can heat water with magma.
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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?
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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.
As opposed to what? Solid magma is more commonly called "rock".
If buffalos were meant to fly, they would have buffalo wings.
Man have buffalo wings, therefore man were meant to fly.
QED
Iceland already produces energy by pumping water into the ground and on to very hot but still solid magma to produce steam energy. So the distinction matter since the reaction is very volatile if the 'rock' is still liquid.
I imagine that you would have two somewhat vexing problems: One, as you note, temperatures high enough to melt rocks are pretty hard on most machinery. Two, while extremely hot, magma has a distinctly finite amount of energy available. Once you get serious about extracting heat, it will cool and solidify. Once solidified, it will be a mediocre conductor of heat. Thus, unless you want to get only toy amounts of energy out of the system, you will need a fairly large surface area exposed to the magma.
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".
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).
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.
The human harvesting of geothermal energy is totally insignificant compared to natural cooling over the entire surface of the earth.
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, 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.
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 was an Ancient geothermal plant. The Ancients never met a technology they couldn't make explode, usually taking out at least a sizable chunk of planet.
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!
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