Sunday, January 4, 2009

Geothermic vs. Geothermal Energy - cheaper electricity

December 22, 2008

Geothermic Energy Could Power All Nations

by Peter Gawain, SIREX

A new renewable energy technology could truly revolutionize the way energy is produced around the world for a fraction of the cost of what we all pay for electricity now. There are zero emissions, zero heat loss to atmosphere, and this energy can last indefinitely into the future with no damage to local or larger ecosystems. It is called "GEOthermic Energy" (as opposed to Geothermal) and it uses the deep crust (lithosphere) heat.

It works by utilizing a new coring technology that employs dynamic forces that can be adjusted to the different rock materials breaking point. This means that it can easily bore through the various layers efficiently and effectively in a 10-foot diameter vertical tunnel Sirex Vertical Tunnels (SVT), making it possible now to go as deep as 12 miles down to reach the hot rock zone.

This tunnel is built robotically, is ringed with re-enforced casing, equipped with periodic horizontal platforms to act as locks and pressurized with an inert gas to stabilize the tunnel and subterranean earth movement. Then through an adiabatic recycling process — nitrogen (not water) — is heated from the earth's deep, solid rock heat reserves, and used to turn turbines/generators and produce an inexhaustible, clean energy source.

One of these SVTs will produce 2,000 megawatts (MW) of power. The boring equipment can be scaled up or down, depending on the project, and can be used for numerous other applications as well.

The Conventional Technology

Conventional drilling methods are restricted by extremely long and overstressed extensions used to rotate the drill-bit down in the hole, and this ordinary deep-drilling does not allow chiseling, hammering or roto-hammering through the hardest rock formations on earth.

To rotate the drill-bit these sensitive extensions must be pulled out regularly in order to replace the scraping, scratching and slowly inefficient operating grinding tools when they become dull, broken or not effective anymore. To remove all extensions, exchange the drill-bit, assemble the extensions and send it all back down the hole each time is a time-consuming and an expensive procedure.

Depending on the increasing weight of these extensions, the diameter of the bore-hole must be reduced telescopically to protect the extension-shafts from rupturing or breaking by gravity and their own weight. The difficulties associated with casing or building protective walls against contamination of the production medium is another severe obstacle of ordinary deep-drilling.

Our Technology

In stark contrast, SVTs can penetrate down to depths where the temperature is about 500º C from anywhere on land around the globe. This is more than twice the current depths with varying diameter bore tunnels and with SVT's it is done much more efficiently and with far less wear on the equipment.

The world of mining has changed. The efficient harvesting of high temperatures on a large scale with large bore-diameters is now obtainable, eliminating the need for a fuel source, emitting no pollution and creating zero waste heat or toxic waste. The chart below shows where GEOthermic diverges from Geothermal:

Comparing

Geothermal

Geothermic

1. The view

white steam clouds escape

subsurface - invisible NO EMISSIONS

2. The location

restricted to irregularities

obtainable at all locations in the earth crust

3. Electricity costs

US $0.03 - 0.06 / kWh

US $0.02 - 0.03 / kWh

4. Permanent operation

no

yes

5. Emission-free

no

yes

6. Power production-rate

minimal - low

high

7. Temperature

250 ºC

500 ºC

8. Reheating required

yes

no

9. Power plant capacity [GW]

0.2

2.0 - 8.0

10. Efficiency

low

high

11. Interference with landscape and environment

yes

no

12. A balanced subsurface

no

yes

13. Available in earthquake prone locations

no

yes

It's visionary inventor, German physicist, Dr. Helmut Sieke Ph.D. lives in the Prescott, Arizona area. After working with his good friend and colleague Dr. Werner Von Braun on the ram-jet system over 35 years ago, he is credited with many innovations to his name; the pulse-generated coring technologies and his own version of a compressed-air powered vehicle technology to name just a few.

Providing clean, sustainable, inexpensive and virtually inexhaustible energy to power our world is the best way to provide a stable economic platform for all nations on which we can build a civil society. Using compressed-air vehicles can all but eliminate greenhouse gases (GHG) and man-made heat being released into our atmosphere.

Further, it will be possible to build manufacturing plants, government buildings, and super-structures on top of the SVT and underground Geothermic Energy Power Plants (GPPs), making it virtually unknown to the eye that it even exists.

Several southeast Asian countries have either approved funding and permitting or are in various stages of commissioning GPPs and the word is spreading.

Peter Gawain is the new U.S. Marketing Director of SIREX PHS, Inc. and President of RDI Energy Plants, Inc.; a renewable energy company primarily focused on Waste-to-Energy and Biomass technologies. You can watch a video of SIREX at http://youtube.com/newcleanenergy . The website, which is currently under construction, will be available at www.sirexgeothermic.com.

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