Can’t beat the heat: Harnessing the Earth’s clean power with advanced technologies

Enhanced systems may spread potential for geothermal energy

Traditionally, geothermal energy is dependent on isolated hot spots.

New technology, though, could one day turn up the heat on the potential of this clean and renewable power source.

As noted in a recent article in Materials World magazine, geothermal plants have been handcuffed by geography—limited, specifically, to sites where the heat source (a layer of magma under the Earth’s crust) is close enough to the surface to be recovered.

However, technology may soon have something to say about that.

Enhanced geothermal systems, like those being advanced by Baker Hughes, focus on drilling wells into hot rock, and circulating fluids via an underground heat exchanger. Baker Hughes’ own drilling system, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, has shown itself to be effective even at very high temperatures of 300 degrees Celsius.

And across the Pacific Ocean in Japan, a research team has created the first closed-loop geothermal plant—for demonstration purposes only, at this point—that injects and circulates water from above ground.

Skeptical about geothermal energy? Consider the following:

• It could supply the world’s entire energy needs, according to the U.S. Union of Concerned Scientists;
• It contains 50,000 times the energy of the world’s supply of oil and natural gas at depths of 10,000 meters, according to leading research physicists;
• The demand for geothermal energy will triple in the next 25 years, predicts Baker Hughes.

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