An MIT spinout aims to use X-rays to melt rock and repurpose coal and gas plants into deep geothermal wells - effectively transforming dirty fossil-fuel plants into clean ones.
The brain behind the concept is a research engineer in MIT's Plasma Science and Fusion Center, Paul Woskov. The engineer has spent the last 14 years developing a method that may bring an abandoned coal power plant back online, entirely carbon-free, within a decade.
Since it is continuously created within our planet's crust, it is a renewable energy source. However, even though other renewable energy sources have risen in recent decades, geothermal energy has plateaued owing to the fact that harvesting is no easy feat. In fact, geothermal facilities only exist in regions where circumstances allow for energy extraction at relatively shallow depths of up to 400 feet beneath the Earth's surface.
The MIT press release states that conventional drilling becomes impracticable beyond a certain depth because the deeper crust is both hotter and harder. This wears down mechanical drill bits, which is why a novel solution is greatly needed.That novel solution might be a microwave-emitting device called a gyrotron.
Scheduled to be completed before the end of the year, the Quaise team wants to evaporate a hole ten times the depth of Woskov's lab trials with the larger machine. Then, they will evaporate a hole ten times the depth of the previous one, which is referred to as a 100-to-1 hole. Ultimately, the company hopes to begin vaporizing rock in field tests late next year and extract energy from pilot geothermal wells with rock temperatures of up to 932 degrees Fahrenheit by 2026.
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