Jun
9th
Tue
9th
Drill Without A Drill Bit
Potter Drilling says it has spallation drilling technology that can dig down about 9km using superhot steam. The 800C steam is created in a catalyzed reaction of peroxide and methanol, and the heat helps to break up rocks. This drilling technique could be used to access geothermal energy — which seems to only account for generating 10,000MW worldwide. The deepest drilling people have accomplished so far is about 12km in the 1960s. Given that the Earth’s crust is approximately 5 to 70 km deep, we’ve really only stratched the surface…. and it makes me wonder if people can ever get deeper than the mantle of the Earth to try to store nuclear waster in the Earth’s core…
