A ground-breaking discovery is sparking hope that geothermal energy at least five times more powerful than current wells could be on the horizon.
The breakthrough comes thanks to “superdeep, superhot” rocks miles below the surface of Earth’s crust, according to a press release published by distribution platform EurekAlert.
Previously, scientists believed they couldn’t harness the heat in these rocks. For geothermal power to be generated from them, water would need to pass through “fractures” to reach a supercritical state of more than 750 degrees Fahrenheit, as Interesting Engineering explained.
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However, as the release noted, superdeep rocks are already under immense pressure and heat, making them more ductile, or flexible, like Silly Putty. Because of this, researchers were skeptical that the rocks could form or maintain fractures for the water to move through.
Now, the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) team’s findings, published in the journal Nature Communications, have confirmed previous theoretical work detailed in Geothermal Energy: fractures in these superdeep, superhot rocks are possible.
This knowledge may pave a path toward low-cost energy that can be part of the transition away from polluting dirty fuels driving the overheating of the planet. Moreover, the power would be abundant — “roughly five to 10 times the energy produced by today’s commercial geothermal wells,” per a 2021 Clean Air Task Force report cited in the release.
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“We have shown that the brittle-to-ductile transition is not a cutoff for fluid circulation in the crust, which is promising for the exploitation of deep geothermal reservoirs,” said research lead Marie Violay, head of EPFL’s Laboratory of Experimental Rock Mechanics. “These are among the first experimental results that shed light on such extreme conditions.”
According to the release, Quaise Energy helped fund the study, along with Alta Rock Energy, the European Research Council, the Swiss National Science Foundation, the Swiss Federal Office of Energy, and the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program.
Quaise, a spinoff of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is among the forward-thinking companies investing in geothermal solutions, with its developmental gyrotron drills possibly providing a way to access abundant, renewable power in more than 90% of the world.
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