A geothermal blowout in Japan
He often tweets about mud volcanoes, but today Mark Tingay retweeted a message from a Japanese user of Twitter who filmed a violent eruption of steam – possibly mixed with…
Geothermal
The basics of submersible pumps in geothermal projects
Pumped-well geothermal projects utilize “binary” power plant technology which consists of Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) heat exchangers. The geothermal fluid is pumped from the wells as a single phase liquid…
Coring the seal of a geothermal reservoir
In the little village of Monster, which ironically translates to “sample” in Dutch, operator HVC recently completed a new geothermal well. The well targeted the Lower Cretaceous Delft Sandstone, from…
Ampfing’s flirt with the subsurface is not over yet
There are probably not too many climate activists in the small village of Ampfing in Southern Germany, as the information plaques and monuments dedicated to the local history of oil…
Revolutionising shallow geothermal borehole drilling
“We have been drilling in London’s complex geology for years now. The progression from completing only one borehole every two days, to now having the capability of delivering two in…
A potential depth record?
The website ThinkGeoenergy reported in February that preparations were ongoing for drilling a geothermal well in the south of Poland, with a potential terminal depth of 7 km. Reaching this…
Pumped geothermal power projects – a global overview
Pumped-well geothermal projects utilise the moderate temperature range of geothermal fluids between 100-190 C. Below this temperature, geothermal fluids are generally used for direct heating and above this the fluids…
How an oil service company is moving into renewable space
It is well known that elements such as copper, nickel and lithium are in high demand to provide materials needed for the energy transition. It is less well-known that chemical…
Geothermal energy production can be profitable
“It kept me in the job”, said Elliot Yearsley when asked about scale and corrosion in geothermal wells by a participant during the recent Seapex Conference in Singapore. Yearsley had…
A shallow geothermal borehole in a single day
“We’re operating five rigs continuously across the UK,” Ashley Lowthian from GreenGlove Boreholes tells me when I visit him and his colleague at a drill site in Garthdee, Aberdeen. Ashley…
The production chemistry challenges of geothermal energy
“The geothermal industry requires a much tighter control on scale formation than the oil and gas industry”, said Peter Wilkie from Roemex in a talk delivered during SPE’s online Geothermal…
Mapping a fault using induced seismic events
Twenty years ago, Australia saw the start of a big geothermal project in deeply buried basement rocks. Situated in the Cooper Basin, the project included several phases of production testing…