Using the Earth’s heat

They’re planning on digging a 12 mile hole to harvest the planet’s own heat.

But, doesn’t that mean that the Earth’s own heat will get depleted? And if so, what the hell are the consequences of that?

@shavixmir said
They’re planning on digging a 12 mile hole to harvest the planet’s own heat.

But, doesn’t that mean that the Earth’s own heat will get depleted? And if so, what the hell are the consequences of that?

If we need a source:

https://www.quaise.energy

and one can look for "Quaise" and "energy" to get reports from dozens of journals.

The point of the company is to make the drill.

Then we come to the question of the "depletion of heat":

Of course Earth is not mainly a heat rervoir. Lord Kelvin showed over a hundred years ago, that even with absudly high starting temepratures in the core of a ball of the size of the earth it would cool down in a few thousand years.

The mainheat source is radioactive decay, and of course as the heat evolution is going down and heat is radiated into sapce we harvest some of the crysatllization energy, when the inner core cools and we have a phase transition.

So yes if we actively transport heat through the rather well insulating crust we deplete the heat of the Earth, but even with covering all of current human heat use we won't make a noticeable differene in the next few thousand years...

@ponderable said
If we need a source:

https://www.quaise.energy

and one can look for "Quaise" and "energy" to get reports from dozens of journals.

The point of the company is to make the drill.

Then we come to the question of the "depletion of heat":

Of course Earth is not mainly a heat rervoir. Lord Kelvin showed over a hundred years ago, that even with absudly high startin ...[text shortened]... all of current human heat use we won't make a noticeable differene in the next few thousand years...

Well, at least that’s one last thing to worry about!

Cheers!

@ponderable said
If we need a source:

https://www.quaise.energy

and one can look for "Quaise" and "energy" to get reports from dozens of journals.

The point of the company is to make the drill.

Then we come to the question of the "depletion of heat":

Of course Earth is not mainly a heat rervoir. Lord Kelvin showed over a hundred years ago, that even with absudly high startin ...[text shortened]... all of current human heat use we won't make a noticeable differene in the next few thousand years...

"The mainheat source is radioactive decay"

I doubt that is true. What is your source of information?

@Metal-Brain
Don't worry, go back to sleep in your astoundingly pathetic imitation of a human being.

You make me sick and REALLY hope I can meet up with you someday.

You know NOTHING about geology and show your imitation brain SO clearly and I bet you don't even know Ponderable is a professional chemist with a Phd but don't worry, go back to bed, you wouldn't understand anyway.

@sonhouse said
@Metal-Brain
Don't worry, go back to sleep in your astoundingly pathetic imitation of a human being.

You make me sick and REALLY hope I can meet up with you someday.

You know NOTHING about geology and show your imitation brain SO clearly and I bet you don't even know Ponderable is a professional chemist with a Phd but don't worry, go back to bed, you wouldn't understand anyway.

If you are not lying again then you should be able to prove he is right.
Can you?

@metal-brain said
"The mainheat source is radioactive decay"

I doubt that is true. What is your source of information?

You could go and look it up in the Wikipedai (or if you have one at hand the Encyclopaedia Britannica).

On the other hand I could post some video from some obscure website which claims that another viedo claims....

A comparatively recent paper is https://arxiv.org/pdf/1912.04655.pdf

The earth's core has been cooling since its formation about 4.5 billion years ago.
The core and decay causes the heat.
Scientists estimate it will take another 91 billion years to completely cool. Or is it 91 million?

Either way, we could tap into that heat to power cities and not have any problems.
It will cool slightly faster but not to the point where us using that heat would cause any problems.

We may exist for awhile but not millions of years so I say use the heat source.

@shavixmir
Well one takeaway is the development of highly efficient thermal to electric converters, now up to 40% efficient, more efficient than steam turbines.
So with that in mind, it may be they don't need to dig so many kilometers down to get the kind of heat they would need for direct thermal conversion to electricity.
The regular Peltier converters are already being used in beach box refrigerators/heaters, you pump in electricity to plus and minus and it heats, reverse it plus now in the minus and Vice Versa, it now becomes a refrigerator.
It also can convert heat directly to electricity but not noticeably efficient.

The newest converters, I think from research at MIT, it converts but at a VERY high temp, like 2000 degrees C or near 4K F.

If they cannot find that high a temp then they are back to the old ways, steam into a turbine which means a lot of mechanical crap to maintain.
The new converters have no moving parts, nothing to fail unless it physically breaks.

@shavixmir said
They’re planning on digging a 12 mile hole to harvest the planet’s own heat.

But, doesn’t that mean that the Earth’s own heat will get depleted? And if so, what the hell are the consequences of that?

Digging a 12 mile hole is expensive so I would not expect it to become trendy enough to deplete the Earth’s own heat. It is better to do it in between tectonic plates like Iceland since the heat is near the surface. Iceland makes good use of their easy access geothermal.

Regarding finding new energy sources,the UK is an island with tides twice a day.
I don't understand why we can't use wave power more to generate electricity.
I presume there must be a good reason but I don't know what it is.
Presumably it would be cheaper than digging big holes or building nuclear power stations but it's hardly ever mentioned in the media.
Perhaps I'll google it one day

@venda
I guess wave power would take the attention of people like Alice Walton, who is worth over 60 billion and has an interest in art, she funded an art museum called Crystal Bridges and more, or Jeff Bezos, or Bill Gates or some UK tycoon to get interested in such a project. Seems like a no brainer but you need to be able to protect shipping from such devices which need to be large and numerous to get real power, like gigawatts generated, or terawatts even better.....

@ponderable said
If we need a source:

https://www.quaise.energy

and one can look for "Quaise" and "energy" to get reports from dozens of journals.

The point of the company is to make the drill.

Then we come to the question of the "depletion of heat":

Of course Earth is not mainly a heat rervoir. Lord Kelvin showed over a hundred years ago, that even with absudly high startin ...[text shortened]... all of current human heat use we won't make a noticeable differene in the next few thousand years...

The Earth's heat is actually manufactured by
the planet's rotations and revolutions.