Part 4

GEOCOGEN Project – Part 4

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The GEOCOGEN Project

Point number 1 – how do we get the energy to the surface?

This is the crux of the project – it is the part of the project that was not feasible when Kurt Brunnschweiler invented it 30 years ago. Today’s tunneling equipment is fully capable of building a shaft or tunnel as much as 15-20 kilometres deep – that is around 10-15 miles deep. Switzerland has some of the premier tunnelling operators in the world, and they are drilling tunnels this long – albeit mostly horizontally – through the Alps and in many other locations around the world. For these tunnels, large diameter vertical ventilation shafts are also necessary, and some of these are 2 kilometres (6600 feet) long and more.

The objective is to make the tunnel up to 10 meters (33 feet) in diameter, shore up the walls to prevent cave-ins, and run piping from the surface level to the bottom of the tunnel where the water will be heated to supercritical temperature and will rise back to the surface under pressure. The process will be what is called a thermosiphon, but on a grand scale. A thermosiphon is where there is a heat source at the bottom of a hairpin of tubing, and the lighter heated water (or steam) rises by itself in the exit (outlet) side because it is less dense and it is replaced by more dense, cold water coming down the other (inlet) side. Looking at is another way, the column of water weighs more than the column of steam, and so it tries to displace it. A daily example is the percolator coffee maker.

The supercritical steam (don’t worry about what “supercritical” means here – just think of it as being REALLY HOT! – far above 100°C) will be used to drive conventional steam turbines, similar to those being used in powerhouses today, coupled to electrical generators. The systems will be sized to create around one GigaWatt of electrical energy – that’s 1’000 MegaWatts – enough to power a city of around half a million inhabitants, depending upon the degree of electrical consumption per capita.

In addition to the electricity generated, there is enough heat available that the entire city could be heated by steam and/or hot water from the GEOCOGEN plant in a district heating concept, with enough left over for many greenhouses and hot water spas.

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