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Hot dry rock heat mining [electronic resource] : An alternative energy progress report

Published
Washington, D.C. : United States. Dept. of Energy, 1991.
Oak Ridge, Tenn. : Distributed by the Office of Scientific and Technical Information, U.S. Dept. of Energy.
Physical Description
Pages: (17 pages) : digital, PDF file
Additional Creators
Los Alamos National Laboratory, United States. Department of Energy, and United States. Department of Energy. Office of Scientific and Technical Information
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Summary
Mining Heat from the hot dry rock (HDR) resource that lies beneath the earth's crust may provide an almost inexhaustible supply of energy for mankind with minimal environmental effects. In the heat mining process, water is pumped down an injection well into a mass of hydraulically fractured hot rock. As the water flows under high pressure through the opened rock joints, it becomes heated by the rock. It is returned to the surface through a production well (or wells) located some distance from the injector where its thermal energy is recovered by a heat exchanger. The same water is then recirculated through the system to extract more thermal energy. In this closed-loop process, nothing but heat is released to the environment during normal operation. The technical feasibility of HDR heat mining already has been proven by field testing. A long-term flow test is scheduled to begin in 1991 at the world's largest HDR heat mine in New Mexico, USA, to demonstrate that energy can be produced from HDR on a continuous basis over an extended time period. Significant HDR programs are also underway in several other countries. The paper describes the HDR resource, the heat mining concept, environmental characteristics, economics, developments at Los Alamos to date, and HDR development outside the US. 15 refs., 5 figs., 2 tabs.
Report Numbers
E 1.99:la-ur-91-1164
E 1.99: conf-910809--1
conf-910809--1
la-ur-91-1164
Subject(s)
Other Subject(s)
Note
Published through SciTech Connect.
01/01/1991.
"la-ur-91-1164"
" conf-910809--1"
"DE91011393"
International symposium on energy and environment, Espoo (Finland), 25-28 Aug 1991.
Duchane, D.V.
Funding Information
W-7405-ENG-36
View MARC record | catkey: 14387809