stuey
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15 years ago
http://www.thisiscornwall.co.uk/news/Hot-Rocks-renewable-energy-brought-Cornwall/article-1419902-detail/article.html 

Looks like the geothermal boys have found out eco-funding is a more willing lender than high street banks.

Opinions please 🙂
DougCornwall
15 years ago
Nice one Stuey.

These schemes always blow hot and cold (!)with funding... but hey good luck to them I guess if it sucks in up country cash to our poor starving local economy!!!

Am I correct in remembering that they had trouble with small earthquakes waking up the good folk of Longdowns from their slumbers on the last attempt at deep drilling for cash?
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carnkie
15 years ago
From Australia'

"The greatest impediment to the renewable energy industry is that the nation's electricity is among the cheapest in the world, thanks to huge deposits of high-grade coal."

http://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/scientists-get-hot-rocks-off-over-green-nuclear-power/2007/04/11/1175971183212.html 

My opinion. We should have renewed the nuclear programme years ago.
The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.
Dolcoathguy
15 years ago
I thought the St.Day was riddled with unsurveyed shafts from older mines. Good to see that local mine surveyors and consultants will be kept in business, assuming they use local firms.

Is it safe to come out of the bunker yet?
DougCornwall
15 years ago
They going down 5km so well beyond any existing mine workings.
In the press they saying that two areas of naturally shattered rock lie beneath where they are drilling on the edge of the United Downs land fill site, so no need to artificially break up the rock which is what caused problems last time they played in Cornwall.
However doubts are already floating about in the press, it seems the cost of the electric to run the pumps is huge compared to the energy output. Then there is the cost of setup and drilling, ongoing maintainance etc.
Also they say that waste heat will be used for local homes but they are drilling where there are only scattered communities and its a long way from the nearest urban area so no one quite sure how that will benefit anyone.
A better scheme with waste heat may to set up commercial greenhouses or something rather than for domestic use.

On the face of it they ticking the popular boxes, free eco energy, cheap local heat, been on telly etc for good public reaction for planning, all the correct PR stuff ahead of the planning permission meeting.
However most folks seem highly sceptical, it all seems pretty airy fairy and too good to be true. And with the old saying in mind that 'if it looks too good to be true it probably is too good to be true', judgement is reserved.
Personally I agree with Stuey that they really drilling for EU and government cash. But bottom line...good luck to them cos it ain't my money and maybe they need an odd job man.
[/center][/i]Always have a backup plan.[i][center]
stuey
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15 years ago
That bit of ground is slightly (within 100 yds) NW of the Whiteworks lode/Carharrack mine structure. According to the plans I have, there are no shafts in that bit of ground. County adit runs pretty much under there though. There is a fair possibility that there are some hefty stopes down there on Hot/Middle lode as United underlies in depth.
http://www.geothermalengineering.co.uk " title="
http://www.geothermalengineering.co.uk ">
http://www.geothermalengineering.co.uk  

Very impressive website and people and I have to say "good luck" to them. I don't think it's going to work, but I hope they prove me wrong.


justin
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15 years ago
I worked at hot rocks down at rosemanowes quarry right up until the government pulled the plug in 92 (i think) Ah the years of plenty......much tax payers money....

Not to sure about this crowd ... they don't seem to good on the PR side ....

thoughts going through my mind..... grant money bandits / emperors new clothes.

Certain elements of what they're saying ring true.
drilling depths of 5-6km would certainly put them in the right sort of ball park for 180-200 degree returns based on the calculated thermal gradiant projected for the carmenellis area.

However I think the following have been seriously overlooked


drilling cost ..... drilling lets say 3 large diameter boreholes in granite is by no means a cheep process it's costly in rollercone bits, rig time, crew time. twenty years ago it cost approx £20K a day just to have a kentings drilling rig standing on site doing nothing through in three drilling crews to cover 24 hours and this figure more than doubles. All this before you throw in consumables like drilling mud, diesel and power...... oh yeah and bog roll
drilling crews sh!t like it's a national sport
Make no assumption here a drilling crew would be on site a very long time.... A guess would be best case 6-8 months
worse case 18 months

Drilling in a heavily mined area can be problematic in that you run risk of drill string breakages and damage to the rig if a few hundred tons of drill string breaks in to a stope

The bore holes would have to be cased with steel liner through the mined area to contain any future circulating fluid. I suspect also that any voids hit would have to be filled with grout before drilling could continue..

The next question is that of the geothermal reservoir itself
If you aim to use a fragmented zone then you run the risk of possible having a heat exchange area where the path ways are too large and the heat extracted into the circulating water is less than predicted potential.

Creating a reservoir using explosive or hydraulic fracturing would enable you to create your own beast which you can develop to full potential in stages.
for info it was hydraulic fracturing that caused the tremors under stithians in the 80's.

Geothermal reservoirs have life expectancy as do we all
the more water you pump through them the more the path ways wear and increase in size and so efficiency drops off
The rule of thumbs for this is 25 years approx

pumping cost are major just to keep the fluid circulating
surface plant cost significant....

And finally the recovered energy figures they banging around are actually quite modest and i cant really see recovered heat being used locally distributing it to anywhere other than any industrial estate would be a joke....

so question is really is it actually worth the hasal

The european site at soultz son foret in the alsace region near strazbourg has a much higher thermal gradiant 200 degrees c in boreholes approx 1500 meters deep. even so it has still taken many many years of development....


so or these reasons i see many people making money out of massive consultancy fees and any contracts fro grant funding would be only "best endeavours" with no specific deliverable....Or revolve the whole thing around a LTD company which can just be wound up once the cash has been extracted........

nuff said 4 now ..... watch this space














😉
stuey
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15 years ago
Interesting reply there Justin.

Looking at their website, they are clearly very able people in this field. So, assuming they aren't fraudulent (which I do) they must have confidence. Interesting about the company structure 🙂

I wonder how you calculate there is brecciated rock so far down? I assume this is some sort of modelling. Surely anything fractured that far down would be quartz filled, no?

Cornwall is ripe for a big waterwheel resurrection, in my opinion. 🙂
Roy Morton
15 years ago
Now, are they drilling five kilometre deep holes, ie holes five kilometres deep, or are they drilling five number kilometre deep holes ie five 1km deep holes?
I think the description is somewhat vague, however in that area the United Hot Lode was certainly giving temperatures well above the expected gradients at shallow depths. If this was a hydrothermal spring then this heat source could be potentially endless. Will it work?...I guess they will just have to suck it and see.
Curiously enough, Dr Tony Batchelor who initially ran the Hot rocks Project at Longdowns, formed a company called Geoscience, they did some initial drilling and identified a site in the Carnon Valley close to the old Nangiles adit portal, which they said had a better output than the quarry at Longdowns!
There were tales of a large 100 foot drilling rig to be erected on the site and round the clock drilling for many months. The locals took to that idea like bacon sarneys at a barmitzva. I would have liked to have seen what they were going to do with the waste from the drilling; send it down the river maybe?......... 😮 :lol:




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"But I''m not Chinese!"
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Knocker
15 years ago
Its 5km Deep holes (4 no I think)
stuey
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15 years ago
That is a long way. I'm still curious how they know the rock is fractured down there.

If it was the results from some sort of reflective test, it's probably looking fractured due to all the stoping in the area :lol:

I find it very difficult to believe that such heat (hot lode) comes solely from the oxidation of pyrite and reactions/hydrolisation of H2SO4. I'm sure the expert knows.
Knocker
15 years ago
The heat at that depth is the heat stored from when the batholith pushed up, which was obviously a massive volcanic event.
stuey
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15 years ago
I was thinking more about the hot lode in United. The whole area was hot in depth. Oddly enough, the Granite is off to the W a bit. If it was purely granite related, you would have expected to have seen mega heat in other deep mines in the granite, like Tresavean.

I'm not sure what the usual temp is of drained big sulphide veins, it would suggest that the particular heat of United/Consols was in the majority due to chemical factors, rather than residual heat from the batholith. (NB:- I don't think Consols, United or Clifford (the deepest) struck granite at 350 or so fathoms. Poldice did, but I don't think it was particularly hot.

I still can't see, despite the presence of hot springs at United/Clifford/Consols why this area would be more prone to fractured granite at depth.

I'd like to know/why the granite is fractured at that depth and how they are so confident of it. In my (ignorantish) estimation, I can't see either.....but I don't have a PhD in these things.

Hopefully the chief will come on here and set the record straight.
Knocker
15 years ago
I will ask my mate why they are so sure next time I chat to him
derrickman
15 years ago
Kenting Drilling, ah yes, the first step to my screen name... it's sometimes said that I'm a cynical soul, usually by people who know me quite well, but I would have to feel that if there was anything worth having down there they would have found it by now....


I knew Tony Batchelor and he is definitely a man who knew how to get paid for what he knew, fair play to him. He was also much involved in a claim for extra payment for unforeseen ground conditions involving Miller Buckley, molto shillings there at the end of the day.


one all-but-irrelevant vignette re Kentings. I was on a walking/drinking/surfing trip to Cornwall with some mates, in or about 1984, and we met someone known to one of our party. Said gent lived in St Buryan, if memory serves, and was known as 'Smuggler' on account of his truly heroic beard. He had apparently worked for British Antarctic Survey ( whence the nickname ) and subsequently for Kentings at Rosemanowse


''the stopes soared beyond the range of our caplamps' - David Bick...... How times change .... oh, I don't know, I've still got a lamp like that.
Roy Morton
15 years ago
"stuey" wrote:

That is a long way. I'm still curious how they know the rock is fractured down there.

If it was the results from some sort of reflective test, it's probably looking fractured due to all the stoping in the area :lol:

I find it very difficult to believe that such heat (hot lode) comes solely from the oxidation of pyrite and reactions/hydrolisation of H2SO4. I'm sure the expert knows.



I'm pretty sure that at 5K's down ( 3miles ), they will be out of the sulphide concentration zones and into hot granite.
Wot say the experts?

"You Chinese think of everything!"
"But I''m not Chinese!"
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Speedycaver
15 years ago
5km drilling is not that excessive, the deepest is well over 20km. The cost, on the other hand, will be massive. This is the main reason why the plentiful Geothermal resources around the UK are not taken advantage of.

I worked for Southampton Geothermal for 10 years. The well is 1.8km deep. The heat is in the form of hot water which is simply pumped out, filtered, passed through a heat exchanger and then dumped into the estuary. The 'secondary water', after taking the heat from the geothermal water, was then pumped around Southampton through 23km of buried pipe work to various buildings. Basically, it's as simple as that.

The original well was drilled in the early 80's by the Council/Government who were actually looking for oil. They found Hot Water instead and capped it off.

The Southampton resource is relatively small, the water has to be lifted the last 600 meters and rely's on a turbine pump installed in the well at that depth. The water reaches surface at around 76 Degrees C but the rate of withdrawal is limited to about 20lts per second as the temperature drops if you exceed this. (That produces around 1 MW of heat). It's also too small to make recycling the waste water by pumping it back down an option. The cost of a 2nd well and the temperature reduction this would result in makes it a non runner.

Unfortunately, the turbine pump (600 meters down the well) has worn out. It now costs more in electricity to run the pump that the value of the heat it produces. I looked into the costs of replacing the pump years ago. This would have required a drilling rig type set up to withdraw the pipes to reach the pump and was proved to be non-viable.

A real shame.

Southampton Airport are toying with the idea of constructing their own Geothermal heating scheme as they sit over the same heat resource. Not sure the idea will be viable though, due to the drilling costs and the associated plant required for such a scheme. Also, they would have to be sure they make full use of the heat 24hrs a day, every day.

Hot rocks is a different story though. A higher temperature means more heat per volume of water used. As long as you are guaranteed to be able to use the energy, it is a winner. The steam can run generators to produce electricity which can be put straight into the grid. The problem being the very low value of night time electricity. The heat also needs to be used as electricity production alone will probably not pay for itself. The problem is guaranteeing the heat is used 24hrs a day, 365days a year.
justin
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15 years ago



one all-but-irrelevant vignette re Kentings. I was on a walking/drinking/surfing trip to Cornwall with some mates, in or about 1984, and we met someone known to one of our party. Said gent lived in St Buryan, if memory serves, and was known as 'Smuggler' on account of his truly heroic beard. He had apparently worked for British Antarctic Survey ( whence the nickname ) and subsequently for Kentings at Rosemanowse





The weasel you refer to is kevin gilbert... and indeed was employed at rosemanowes as a pumpman/fitter up until the late eighties ......
beats me how he survived as long as he did ......
sort of guy who'd climb over his dying mum to slip his sister a portion....... :lol:
derrickman
15 years ago
the main thing I remember was his girlfriend calling him on the phone, she was trying to make the usual late-night, I-love-you-do-you-love-me sort of call, and he had a roomful of laughing, farting drunks following the proceedings with great interest..

I can't comment on these rural matters to which you refer... :blink:
''the stopes soared beyond the range of our caplamps' - David Bick...... How times change .... oh, I don't know, I've still got a lamp like that.

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