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Page Three December 2005 SMU Geological Sciences Continued from Page 2 squared. Using approximately 60 mW/m2 for the average output, the global heat flux is 3 X 1013 watts or 30 terajoules each second! This compares with the 12 terajoule per second usage of hydrocarbons as an energy source by humans. So why aren’t business and government leaders flocking to geothermal energy? The answer is energy density, convenience, and cost. Abarrel of light oil contains the chemical energy equivalent of 6 gigajoules. As liquid, this form of energy is easily transported to where it’s needed. At $60 per barrel, crude oil is almost 5x less expensive (22 cents) than a bottle of water purchased out of a vending machine ($1.00)! Gasoline, at a retail price of $2 per gallon, is 36% of the price of that vending machine bottle of water. For price and convenience, liquid hydrocarbons are steep competition, until we run out or they become too valuable to burn. Recall that the “Babyboom” generation will see 80% of the recoverable oil burned over their lifetimes. The action for heat flow is clearly where the magma is. Mid- ocean ridges must produce about 18 km3/yr of magma to account for current spreading rates. Picritic magma coming into the ridge system is approaching 1400 oC and the heat capacity of silicates is about 1kJ/kg/oK. Added to this supply is the latent heat of crystallization; the heat released when magma solidifies is 400 kJ/kg of energy. As the conversion factor for cubic kilometers to cubic meters is a billion, the ridge systems put out terawatts of energy (~2 TW), a little less than 10% of global heat flux. Blacksmoker hot springs (~350 oC) at mid-ocean ridges are a consequence of hydrothermal convection driven by the mid-ocean ridge heat engine. The second part of the geothermal energy equation is the availability and movement of fluid to transport and concentate the heat. Perhaps, in this century, we will develop the technology to tap into this tremendous source of energy available for billions of years of Earth history while recognizing that capture of the entire ridge system heat flux could only offset about 16% of our current global demand for energy. Figure 2: A contour map of estimated temperatures at 6 km depth using bottom hole temperatures (BHT) from wells at a variety of depths. This map from McKenna et al. (2005) combines the measurements with inferred heat flows to project the tempera- ture data onto a common datum level, here 6 km depth (~20,000 ft). The number of deep wells and areas with temperatures above 125 oC suggest a great potential for geothermal energy. For the moment, the Geothermal Map of North America demonstrates that there are many regions where waters may be hot enough to generate electricity when brought to the surface (Figure 2, and Figure 3 on page 6). The irony is that many of these geothermal prospects result from activities that produce the energy source that we would like to be able to conserve or replace. SMU Alumnus, Professor Will Gosnold, Jr., Uses Temperature Logs from Boreholes to Record Climate Change Will Gosnold, Jr. (Ph.D., 1976), Professor of Geophysics and Chairman of the Department of Geology and Geological Engineering at the University of North Dakota, is making use of temperature (T) logs from boreholes over the northern Great Plains to docu- ment climate change on multiple timescales. A major problem for understanding climate change is to get a long enough record at the proper sensitivity. The Sun’s luminosity (~1360 W/m2) is the major driv- ing force for climate. The interaction of this radiative heat flux with the atmosphere determines the climate. Carbon dioxide and methane, trace constituents in the atmosphere, are greenhouse gases that are naturally occurring while at the same time affected by human activities. Warming induced by anthropogenic sources of greenhouse gases must be separated from changes in the solar heat flux. Seasonal and decadal chang- es in surface T are faithfully recorded by the ground as a sinusoidal temperature wave migrates into the subsurface. This signal is superimposed on the long term steady state geotherm and can be inferred by mathematical analysis. Logs that monitor the surface changes in borehole temperatures suggest both an increase in the solar constant and forcing from anthropogenic sources of greenhouse gases. The effect is a turning of the T curve towards higher temperature (e.g inset in Figure 1) in the upper ten’s of meters in boreholes from 46 to 50 oN.PDF Image | Geothermal Energy from Deep Wells
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