You have commented 339 times on Rantburg.

Your Name
Your e-mail (optional)
Website (optional)
My Original Nic        Pic-a-Nic        Sorry. Comments have been closed on this article.
Bold Italic Underline Strike Bullet Blockquote Small Big Link Squish Foto Photo
Submit your comments on this article
Science & Technology
Geothermal test will pour water into volcano to make power
2012-01-23
My brother, just today, sent me an email stating that the Darwin awards had been announced. I then ran across the referenced article which describes a "plan to pump 24 million gallons of water into the side of a dormant volcano in central Oregon" to create steam to generate electricity.

I once read an article on why Krakatoa was such an explosive volcano. The answer was that Krakatoa was a mixture of two kinds of magma, mafic (high melting point, denser, and more runny) and felsic (created by its interaction with water, lighter, has a lower melting point and is viscous). The lighter felsic floats on top of the heaver (and hotter) mafic. Because it is more viscus, felsic can plug the pipes and so like a thumb blocking the opening of a soda bottle, build up pressure. The water turns to steam and eventually the pipes burst with explosive results.

Hmmmm.
Posted by:Mike Ramsey

#4  I know very little about geothermal technology. But I did notice that one of final stages will be to frack the geothermal zone.

I expect that the volume of outrage against fracking a volcano will be expoential to the amount of money Obama's cronies have invested in geothermal energy.
Posted by: junkiron   2012-01-23 23:10  

#3  Fundamentally no different than most any geothermal power plant. The general concept is to find an area of anomalously hot rock (recent volcanic flow, for instance) and circulate water through it to collect some of the heat and bring it to a power plant to extract the energy. Some plants in northern California, Indonesia, Iceland, and Philippines all come to mind. The amount of manmade interference in the natural process is MINISCULE.
Posted by: Glenmore   2012-01-23 20:35  

#2  Water on a volcano is foolhardy. Good thing it never rains in Oregon.
Posted by: AuburnTom   2012-01-23 20:15  

#1  I imagine they are laying a metal pipe down there to channel the water down and steam back out. Using the volcano in the same way you use the reactor core in a nuclear plant.
Posted by: rjschwarz   2012-01-23 20:08  

00:00