Launching technology to 'evaporate' rocks, the US is preparing to drill the deepest hole in history: 500 degrees Celsius is nothing!

Quaise Energy Company, part of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US, plans to use rock evaporation technology at the Earth's core to exploit deep geothermal energy (heat from the Earth).

The depth that Quaise Energy targets is 20,000 meters where rock and soil temperatures reach up to 500 degrees Celsius. This depth is 2.26 times longer than the world's highest mountain peak, Everest; and 1.63 times more than the artificial borehole currently holding the record for the deepest on the planet, made by the Soviet Union in 1989 (named the Kola super deep borehole).

Scientists say drilling deep into the Earth's core is extremely difficult and technically challenging. Because the deeper you go, the higher and more complex the temperature and rock layers become. In turn, the deeper the drill bit, the higher the temperature that can be exploited to produce electricity.

So, what technology will Quaise Energy use to keep their drill bits from being as soft as noodles at the Earth's core?

Exclusive technology "made in USA"

Thinkgeoenergy said on March 12 that Quaise Energy is developing a new technique that uses high-power microwaves in the millimeter range to vaporize rock (referred to as Millimeter Wave Drilling) . This technology is based on more than a decade of research at MIT and recent testing at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, USA.

Quaise Energy's millimeter wave drilling system. (Source: Quaise Energ)

Millimeter wave drilling uses a continuous beam of energy in the range of 30-300 gigahertz (millimeter waves) to melt, vaporize and drill through extremely hard and hot layers of rock deep in the Earth's crust.

Explaining more about the exclusive US millimeter wave drilling technology , Geoengineering said, millimeter wave drilling is a type of direct energy drilling invented by Dr. Paul Woskov, Senior Research Engineer at the Center for Science and Technology. Massachusetts Institute of Technology Plasma Fusion.

Gyroscope at the Max Planck Institute's Wendelstein 7-X Fusion Research Facility in Greifswald, Germany. (Source: Geoengineering).

Millimeter wave drilling is an advanced drilling technology and a byproduct of nuclear fusion research that uses energy to drill through the Earth's crust instead of conventional metal-tipped mechanical drills. .

These millimeter waves are generated using a gyroscope. A gyroscope is a type of linear or electron beam vacuum tube that produces electromagnetic waves in the millimeter wave portion of the electromagnetic spectrum.

How does millimeter wave drilling technology change the "game"?

"Under our feet there is a lot of heat, 20 billion times more energy than the world uses in a year ," said Dr. Paul Woskov.

"Deep geothermal energy is a huge energy reserve, second only to nuclear fusion, available 24/7" - Dr. Paul Woskov - "Father" of millimeter wave drilling technology commented when asked by MIT News about geothermal energy sources that are not yet popular in the world.

Quaise Energy's plan is to use their millimeter wave drilling technology to drill deeper and faster than any country in the world has ever drilled before to reach extremely hot geothermal reservoirs (layers of rock) at 500 degrees C.

Quaise Energy estimates that it will be able to drill boreholes 12 to 20 km deep in the space of a few months (compared to the Soviet Union's Kola Superdeep Borehole Project, which drilled to depths of more than 12 km over a period of 22 years). ).

Dr. Paul Woskov - inventor of millimeter wave drilling technology. (Photo: MIT News).

Quaise Energy is also planning to drill these super deep boreholes at power plants using existing fossil fuels (such as coal, natural gas.) to effectively use and save on facility costs. Existing infrastructure, e.g. power plant generators, cooling towers, buildings, transmission lines, etc.

Scientists estimate that these ultra-deep geothermal power plants could produce terawatts of clean energy over 100 years.

Best of all, if this technology is widely adopted, millimeter wave drilling has great potential to mitigate and reverse Climate Change and Global Warming.

Quaise Energy's plan is to replace fossil fuel power plants with ultra-deep geothermal power plants, which will generate large amounts of very low-carbon energy. and significantly reduce the amount of carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere.

The company added that, as soon as this new technology is introduced, it will be able to produce electricity at a terawatt scale (1 terawatt is equivalent to 1 billion billion watts). In particular, this carbon-free energy source only occupies an area equal to 1% compared to other renewable energy technologies.

These things show that being the leader in monopolizing deep drilling technology gives America privileges in energy and a carbon-free development journey - These are two big problems that many countries around the world have to face. in the context of strong global warming.

Journey "into the ground" around the world

For decades, many countries have tried to drill into the Earth's crust to reach the mantle but failed due to the extremely hot temperatures in the deep boreholes and the extremely hard rocks under pressure deep underground. .

The deeper you drill, the greater the technical challenge. (Photo: Quaise Energy).

From 1961 to 1966, the US Mohole Project attempted to drill through the crust in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Mexico. They can only reach a depth of 183 m.

From 1970 to 1992, the Soviet Union's Kola Superdeep Borehole Project reached a record depth of 12.2 km but could only drill about a third of the way through the Earth's crust. In 1990, Germany initiated the German Continental Deep Drilling Program in Bavaria to try to break the Soviet record but could only drill to a depth of 9 km.

Recently, China also drilled 10,000 meters in its Shendi Ta'Ke-1 super deep borehole (design depth is 11,100 m) in the hinterland of the Taklimakan desert in the Tarim basin (belonging to the Autonomous Region). Xinjiang, northwest China). At this depth, Shendi Ta'Ke-1 is the deepest borehole in Asia.