GEOTHERMAL ENERGY: NEW PROSPECTS

Presented BY:
SOUMITA GHOSH

CONTENTS
Introduction
Sources of Geothermal energy
Geothermal Power
Direct uses of Geothermal energy
below 1500C
Electricity Generation
Geothermal Energy : Indian scenario
New Prospects and latest Technology
CPG technology to trap Geothermal
heat.
EGS Technology
Conclusion

Introduction
Geothermal energy is thermal energy generated and stored in the Earth.
Thermal energy is the energy that determines the temperature of matter. The
adjective geothermal originates from the Greek roots (ge), meaning earth,
and (thermos), meaning heat.

The

geothermal energy of the Earth's crust originates from the original

formation of the planet (20%) and from radioactive decay of materials (80%).

Earth's internal heat is thermal energy generated from radioactive decay and
the residual heat left from Earth's formation. Temperatures at the coremantle
boundary may reach over 4000 C.

Geothermal power, if tapped into, is available around the clock, cost effective,
reliable, sustainable, and environmentally friendly. When used to generate
electricity, this means that geothermal energy is base-load, suited to producing
energy at a constant level.

Different Geothermal

Energy
Hot Water Reservoirs:Sources
As the name implies these are

reservoirs of hot underground water. There is a large amount

of them in the US, but they are more suited for space heating
than for electricity production.

Natural Stem Reservoirs: In this case a hole dug into the

ground can cause steam to come to the surface. This type of

resource is rare in the US.
Geopressured Reservoirs: In this type of reserve, brine

completely saturated with natural gas in stored under

pressure from the weight of overlying rock

Normal Geothermal Gradient: At any place on the planet,

there is a normal temperature gradient of +300C per km dug
into the earth. Therefore, if one digs 20,000 feet the
temperature will be about 1900C above the surface
temperature. This difference will be enough to produce
electricity. However, no useful and economical technology
has been developed to extracted this large source of energy.

Hot Dry Rock: This type of condition exists in 5% of the US.

It is similar to Normal Geothermal Gradient, but the gradient

is 400C/km dug underground.

Molten Magma: No technology yet exists to tap into the

heat reserves stored in magma .

Geothermal Power
o In nature, geothermal heat is in the form of volcanoes, hot
springs and geysers. When heat >150C, it is considered hot
enough to be used to generate electricity and heat.
o The Earth's geothermal resources are theoretically adequate
to supply humanity's energy needs, but only a very small
fraction may be profitably exploited.
o

The geothermal potential of high-temperature resources

suitable for
electricity generation with conventional
technologies (steam turbines, binary turbines) is spread
rather irregularly and depends on the volcanic zones.

Direct uses of geothermal energy is

appropriate for sources below 1500C

space heating
industrial processes
drying
Greenhouses
Aquaculture
hot water
resorts and pools
melting snow

Generation of Electricity is
appropriate for sources >150oC
Geothermal power projects convert the energy contained in

hot rock into electricity by using water to absorb heat from the
rock and transport it to the earths surface, where it is
converted to electrical energy through turbine-generators.
Dry Steam Plants: These were the first type of plants created.

They use underground steam to directly turn the turbines.

Flash Steam Plants: These systems pull deep, high pressured

hot water that reaches temperatures of 3600F or more to the
surface.
This water is transported to low pressure chambers,
and the resulting steam drives the turbines. The remaining water
and steam are then injected back into the source from which they
were taken.
Binary Cycle Plants: This system passes moderately hot
geothermal water past a liquid, usually an organic fluid, that has
a lower boiling point. The resulting steam from the organic liquid
drives the turbines. This process does not produce any emissions
and the water temperature is lower than that needed in the Flash
Steam Plants .

 Water from high-temperature reservoirs is partially flashed

to steam, and heat is converted to mechanical energy by
passing steam through low-pressure steam turbines.

Geothermal Energy : Indian Scenario

India has reasonably good potential for geothermal; which if tapped

into can produce 10,600 MW of power. At present there are no

operational geothermal plants in India. There is also no installed
geothermal electricity generating capacity as of now.

Plans to build India's first geothermal power plants are underway.

Indian states Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal announce

interest in developing the BRIC country's first geothermal energy plant,
with power capacity in the range of 3MW to 5MW.

Companies involved in the Indian geothermal projects include -

ONGC
Panx Geothermal
Tata Power
NTPC
Avin Energy Systems
GeoSyndicate Power Private Limited

 Potential Sites

Puga Valley (J&K)

Tatapani (Chhattisgarh)
Godavari Basin (Himachal Pradesh)
Bakreshwar (West Bengal)
Tuwa (Gujarat)
Unai (Maharashtra)
Jalgaon (Maharashtra)

New Prospects and Latest

technology to
tap
into the Geothermal
Apart from
the conventional power generation , several new prospects of
harnessing the Geothermal power are used.
Potential.
Low-temperature geothermal resources are typically used in direct-use

applications, such asdistrict heating,greenhouses, mineral recovery,

andindustrial process heating.

There are at least 37 greenhouse and 58 aquaculture sites using geothermal

energy in the United States alone.

Latest Technology

CPG
New technology that could revolutionize geothermal energy
made waves at the American Geophysical Unionmeeting
Aug, 2012.
the world's hunger for energy will welcome the idea
of CO2 Plumegeothermal poweror CPG.

CPG benefits include sequestering CO2; making

geothermalenergy accessible in geographic regions where it

has not been economically feasible to use this natural source
for generating power; and storing energy from solar or wind
farms.
CPG could produce ten timesmore geothermal energythan

traditional geothermal approaches currently yielded.

 The liquid CO2, obtained by compressing the gas captured at the

source from fossil fuel burning is pumped deep into the earth.Liquid
CO2 would be pumped into horizontal wells set up in concentric rings
deep in the earth.

Carbon dioxide flows through the porous rock bed deep in earth
more quickly than water, collecting heat more easily and expands more
than water when heated, so the pressure differential between the
CO2 pumped into the ground and the heated CO2 is much greater. This
pressure moves the Geothermal heat or steam up to surface level.

The amount of energy that can be generated depends on this

pressure differential -- and is therefore substantially greater in CPG
than in traditional geothermal plants.

The CO2 expands so much that the pressure alone can carry the

heated CO2 back to the surface, an effect referred to as a

"thermo-siphon". The thermo-siphon makes the use of pumps for
recovering the hot CO2 unnecessary, reducing the energy costs
required to generate the geothermal electricity for a higher overall
efficiency.

Carbon Dioxide Plume

Geothermal (CPG) technology

Developed at the University of

Minnesota (UMN) by Drs.
Martin Saar, Jimmy Randolph,
and Thomas Kuehn.
UMN filed U.S. patent
allowed July 2012; Additional
patents for CPG EOR
applications filed in 2012

 EGS Technology
This is another latest development in this field.
The EGS concept is to extract heat by creating a subsurface
fracture system in the hot constituent rock to which water
can be added through injection wells. Rocks are permeable
due to minute fractures and pore spaces between mineral
grains.
EGS are reservoirs created to improve the economics of

resources without adequate water and permeability.

Enhanced geothermal system (EGS) reservoir
performance is controlled by the set of parameters:
reservoir, geologic, drilling, plant design, and operation.
As depth and temperature increase, the permeability and porosity
of the rocks decreases. To extract heat, it is required to drill to

depths where the rock temperatures are sufficiently high to

justify investment in the heat-mining project.

Conclusion
Renewable energy technologies offer the promise of clean,

abundant energy gathered from self renewing resources such as the

sun, wind, earth, and plants.
At present, the scale of geothermal power industry is small because

of the limitation of easily exploitable high temperature geothermal

resources, therefore, the development of geothermal resources
have to be primarily focused on utilization of ground source heat
pumps which can make good use of the enormous low temperature
geothermal.
Latest technologies for harnessing the Geothermal heat is coming

up,
such as the concept of CO2 PlumeGeothermal power(CPG) and
Enhanced Geothermal System (EGS) which will further revive and
commercialize the geothermal industry.

THANK YOU