Talk:Geothermal power

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High level/summary technical data request[edit]

This article would benefit from some technical information including for example: - Typical steam operating pressures and temperatures; - power to run a facility (pumps, etc) as a percentage of the output power - typical sources of steam condenser cooling (as coal plants?) - typical water treatment issues, - etc... Links to data sources would be OK too. My reason to ask, as a development engineer, is that I know steam is not very efficient at converting heat into electricity, and would like to understand the potential to use the heat for a direct system to reduce CO2 emissions that would certainly be much more efficient. But I lack data. Any help would be much appreciated, and I think would enhance the understanding of other readers without overburdening them with excessive detail. Jerryjoynson (talk) 09:09, 23 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The problem with steam turbines is the efficiency limit of Carnot/Rankine heat engines, and that the geothermal supply is usually not very hot. Adding another stage or employing only one stage using some low-temperature boiling organic compound instead of water steam doesn't help much either, as the same problem applies. Entirely different technologies for heat --> electricity such as the Peltier effect avoid the efficiency formula for heat engines, but alas, are not themselves efficient either. One is attempting to work against entropy: low-quality energy --> high-quality energy. Geothermal power stations use a lot of power internally for cooling fans (if air cooled), re-injection pumps (so as to not poison waterways, etc. and also to reduce the draw on the geothermal heat source that otherwise faces only cold rainwater ingress) and vacuum pumps (to extract non-condensing gases such as carbon dioxide from the condenser) to the degree that a 20MW generator might lose 5MW for these purposes. PR documents will often boast about the 20MW generated, and omit the 5MW detail. For instance the Ohaaki power station loses around 8MW for gas extraction, reinjection, and cooling water circulation. The power station was originally 100MW but the steam supply proved overloaded. Production fell to 30MW, than rose to 60MW with the drilling of additional wells. Operational details are not published in any sort of coherent form such as to fully answer your question. It is very good to have a use for the waste heat (greenhouses, district heating, swimming pools, timber drying, etc) but organising this is difficult as geothermal areas are usually not conveniently located. Except for Rotorua city. But this paragraph would be denounced as Original Research, unless some proper source could be found to plagiarise. NickyMcLean (talk) 11:04, 23 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Future technologies and Geothermal forecast Request[edit]

As many hydrocarbon multinational companies are shifting gears to 'energy' companies, areas of geologic hydrogen, geothermal resources and drilling technologies are a few fields of key interest these companied are looking into. From prior knowledge, the biggest investors in VC startups in drilling/geothermal are oil&gas companies.

My plan is two sections. 1) geothermal forecast 2) New emerging technologies in the space that have the potential to revolutionize geothermal power Houdarar13 (talk) 04:11, 27 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]