Mathematics of Geothermal Energy

sghiassy

Wish geothermal energy was being discussed more for a power source for data centers. Iceland has unlimited geothermal energy and a cold climate. Seems a lot easier than going to space for solar energy

Johnny_Bonk

I think i just saw Fervo delivered their 100MW facility a day ahead of schedule in 23 months.

fghorow

Disclaimer: I work in this field. This is a very brief, high-level overview. It weirdly dives deep into some less-relevant topics and glosses over a LOT of things. It is not irrelevant, but not terribly reliable either. The "Mathematics" in the title is self-evidently clickbait. YMMV.

__MatrixMan__

The general shape of geothermal, where you're up here where it's cool, and you push a fluid down there where it's hot, and you bring the heat back up here to do work... Would a good enough insulator make it thermodynamically feasible to do it from an airship in the Venusian atmosphere? Like, clearly Earth's crust supports temperature gradients which are steep enough to make the juice worth the squeeze. Presumably you're not going to find gradients so steep in the case of a runaway greenhouse effect, but whatever gradients you do find, are there fundamental limits preventing them from being steep enough?

ofjcihen

I was interested until I saw the picture for labor month was a clearly generated picture with protest signs saying “Workers Unit” instead of “Workers Unite”. Does that mean everything in the site is bogus or low-effort? No, but it means I don’t want to potentially waste my time or be misled.

MarkusQ

"Geothermal also has two key advantages over nuclear generation. Nuclear power plants are dependent upon a finite resource (uranium), and nuclear waste disposal is both controversial and costly. In contrast, geothermal generation depends on a virtually infinite source (heat generated in Earth’s interior), and there are no long-term waste issues." 1) Scientific consensus is that the Earth is also finite. 2) Also, the heat generated in the Earth's interior is...nuclear power. 3) Nuclear waste disposal is a political problem, not a technical one; it is "controversial" and "costly" precisely because it's used for these sorts of unserious comparisons. I love the idea of geothermal, but this sort of nonsense has to be called out and shamed.

verdverm

Related, there are people thinking about how we might mitigate super volcano risk and generate electricity at the same time. https://microgridmedia.com/dangerous-volcano-in-oregon-could...

DrProfresher

I have always been a big proponent of geothermal energy as a reliable renewable resource. Not everywhere is geothermal active (or at least it is very hard to harness in many areas) but in the areas geothermal energy is readily available I don't know why it is not utilized more often, even if it is initially expensive. In areas like California, or anywhere along an ocean coast that also has geothermal activity, there should be geothermal desalination plants. Solves the issue of desalination being highly energy intensive. One of my favorite college papers I wrote was on using geothermal energy for desalination. After researching it, I could not believe it was not being utilized more.

hnmullany

If you want the ACTUAL mathematics of geothermal energy - a good place to start is the open source GEOPHIRES model which is available on github and has a UI https://github.com/NREL/GEOPHIRES-v2 https://www.nlr.gov/research/software/geophires-v2-0-geother...