At the current rate of energy consumption, many people have long been concerned about the finiteness of the resources used, in particular oil and gas. And this makes us think about using other, non-traditional sources of energy. According to scientists, geothermal energy can be one of such sources.
At its core, it is the energy possessed by regions in the depths of the Earth. According to scientists, there is a temperature gradient of 20-30 ° C per kilometer inland. At a depth of 10 km in relation to the surface, the temperature can reach very decent values (up to 300 ° C). It is this internal temperature that makes it possible to obtain geothermal energy sources.
In some cases, they are visible and act without any additional effort. Just remember the geyser valley in Kamchatka, or many other areas where geysers and hot springs beat from the ground. This geothermal energy cannot be used just so that you can use it, you need to build some kind of machine that can capture this energy, and it will turn into something more familiar to us, into the same electricity.
Today, there are two ways to implement the use of geothermal energy:
- direct use of heat;
- receipt of electricity.
Unfortunately, direct use of heat is possible only in certain places, for example, in Iceland and Japan. With this method, either hot water from sources is used to heat rooms, or heat exchangers are mounted, often directly in mines.
To obtain electricity, it is necessary to build special geothermal power plants. In this case, geothermal energy is also used in several ways:
- the matter is directly dry steam obtained from mines leading to heated areas deep in the ground. Water is pumped deep into these mines, where it heats up and turns into steam. This dry steam enters the turbine blades, which drives the generator armature, as a result of which the latter generates an electric current;
-heated water is used, it comes under pressure from the depths to the evaporator, where the pressure drops sharply, water evaporates, and the resulting steam enters the turbine blades, which directly twists the generator armature;
- the so-called "binary" method is used. In this case, geothermal energy heats the water. This water enters the heat exchanger, where due to the heat exchange another carrier is heated with a lower vaporization temperature than that of water. The resulting steam enters the turbine, and it leads to the rotation of the armature of the generator that generates current.
In all these cases, the water remaining after the processes of vaporization can be used for space heating.
In such ways, geothermal energy can be used for household needs.
It should be noted that the first geothermal station was built in Italy back in 1904, it is working now. There are many other similar geothermal power plants, in California about 5% of the electricity comes from geothermal power plants, they operate in both El Salvador and Iceland.
The reserves of geothermal energy are truly inexhaustible and many times exceed the existing reserves of fossil fuels. For geothermal stations, the disadvantage is that they can be located in places where there are hot springs. However, stations have already been developed and are being tested that allow obtaining geothermal energy anywhere.
Thus, the information provided allows us to consider geothermal energy as one of the possible options for providing energy with the depletion of fossil resources.