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New Geothermal Heat Extraction Process To Deliver Clean Power Generation

By Geoffrey Harvey, PNNL
July 17, 2009 | 4 Comments

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Washington, United States [RenewableEnergyWorld.com] A new method for capturing significantly more heat from low-temperature geothermal resources holds promise for generating virtually pollution-free electrical energy. Scientists at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) will determine if their innovative approach can safely and economically extract and convert heat from vast untapped geothermal resources.

"By the end of the calendar year, we plan to have a functioning bench-top prototype generating electricity."

-- Pete McGrail, Fellow, PNNL Laboratory

The goal is to enable power generation from low-temperature geothermal resources at an economical cost. In addition to being a clean energy source without any greenhouse gas emissions, geothermal is also a steady and dependable source of power.

“By the end of the calendar year, we plan to have a functioning bench-top prototype generating electricity,” predicts PNNL Laboratory Fellow Pete McGrail. “If successful, enhanced geothermal systems like this could become an important energy source.” A technical and economic analysis conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology estimates that enhanced geothermal systems could provide 10 percent of the nation’s overall electrical generating capacity by 2050.

Click to watch PNNL's Pete McGrail describe the process.

PNNL’s conversion system will take advantage of the rapid expansion and contraction capabilities of a new liquid developed by PNNL researchers called biphasic fluid. When exposed to heat brought to the surface from water circulating in moderately hot, underground rock, the thermal-cycling of the biphasic fluid will power a turbine to generate electricity.

To aid in efficiency, scientists have added nanostructured metal-organic heat carriers, or MOHCs, which boost the power generation capacity to near that of a conventional steam cycle. McGrail cited PNNL’s nanotechnology and molecular engineering expertise as an important factor in the development, noting that the advancement was an outgrowth of research already underway at the lab.

“Some novel research on nanomaterials used to capture carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels actually led us to this discovery,” said McGrail. “Scientific breakthroughs can come from some very unintuitive connections.”

PNNL is receiving $1.2 million as one of 21 DOE Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy grants through the Geothermal Technologies Program.

Some of the research was conducted in EMSL, DOE’s Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory on the PNNL campus.

Geothermal Energy

4 Reader Comments

Comment
1 of 4

carolyn-luce-54460

July 17, 2009

I didn't find that the PNNL video described the process at all. Your article was much more informative.

Comment
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gunther-beck-68945

July 22, 2009

Really, the mentioned video explains nothing. Apart from the fact that they have found some funding. Quite useless.

Comment
3 of 4

stepan-tatulian-153476

July 22, 2009

Imagine if human kind turns to geothermal and starts extracting the heat from the earth's crust in a really big scale. I am curious to know are there any research material evaluating the process in more or less reliable figures, would this accelerate the earth's cooling or the heat will be replenished by the sun?

Comment
4 of 4

chicao

August 3, 2009

Stepan there isn't any possibility to cool our planet by using our vast geothermal resources! The Earth history is a cooling history since the begining. It is not the Sun that provides the geo heat: it came from the radioactivity decay of potassium, uranium and thorium present at the mantle and the crust.
The most intersting aspect of PNNL work is the aid that nanotechnologies coul bring to get a more efficient use of geothermal resources specialy at non volcanic places. I would like to know more about that study.

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