Geothermal is the science related to the heat inside the Earth. Its main practical application is the location of natural reservoirs of hot water, geothermal energy source, for use in power generation, heating and industrial drying processes. The heat is produced between the crust and upper mantle of the Earth, mostly by decay of radioactive elements.
An erupting volcano is a gruesome spectacle in which shocking explosions, fire and molten rocks overflow in the form of lava have always amazed the man, who has played as a force of nature unleashed. But it can also be interpreted as a manifestation of the energy stored within the earth that rises to the surface, releasing.
manifestations of this energy is not only the volcano but also the hot streams, geysers or fumaroles, which are not as dangerous as the volcano and thus with greater assurance of safety.
Geothermal energy has possibly originated from the decay of radioactive isotopes present in inner zones of the Earth, following the fall release large amounts of energy. This energy release is caused by the melting of rocks, water heating, etc. As always, the use of this energy is to obtain a sufficient vapor pressure to get produce electricity through an alternator. With this base, common to all energy exploitation, the specific issues raised are technical problems.
The first attempt to use geothermal heat took place in Larderello (Italy), where natural steam is already used in generating electricity. There are also geothermal plants in USA, EU Soviet, New Zealand, Japan and Iceland.
However, not all parts of the world emerge spontaneously springs of hot water or steam, but there is a way to get them.
When drilling through the crust, the temperature increases as one goes deeper, and by drilling holes deep into the soil, rocks by drilling and injecting water back through the hole made, would turn into steam, which would recover by other means and then be used to produce electricity.
In Los Alamos (USA) are conducting experiments of this type. A volume of 520,000 million cubic meters of underground rock, at a temperature of several hundred degrees, contains as much energy as it is used worldwide in a year, and if it could be extracted only a small part by systems such as those studied in Los Alamos, could have large amounts of clean energy.
But there are still difficult problems such as corrosion suffered by the materials used for the survey, as the water vapor drag salts obtained from the depths of the earth. Geothermal power plants
yields of up to 12%, when compared to a coal plant, which has a yield of 30%, or a nuclear power plant 33% yields are quite small, since in a geothermal power plant is wasted 3 times more than in a coal. However, these plants are more expensive than coal or nuclear, which makes further development and rely on them as an energy source
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