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Could the Horn of Africa one day be powered by volcanoes?
Ethiopia tends to conjure images of sprawling dusty deserts, bustling streets in Addis Ababa or the precipitous cliffs of the Simien Mountains – possibly with a distance runner bounding along in the background. Yet the country is also one of the most volcanically active on Earth, thanks to Africa's Great Rift Valley, which runs right through its heart.
Rifting is the geological process that rips tectonic plates apart, roughly at the speed your fingernails grow. In Ethiopia this has enabled magma to force its way to the surface, and there are over 60 known volcanoes. Many have undergone colossal eruptions in the past, leaving behind immense craters that pepper the rift floor. Some volcanoes are still active today. Visit them and you find bubbling mud ponds, hot springs and scores of steaming vents.
This steam has been used by locals for washing and bathing, but underlying this is a much bigger opportunity. The surface activity suggests extremely hot fluids deep below, perhaps up to 300°C–400°C. Drill down and it should be possible access this high temperature steam, which could drive large turbines and produce huge amounts of power. This matters greatly in a country where 77% of the population has no access to electricity, one of the lowest levels in Africa.
Geothermal power has recently become a serious proposition thanks to geophysical surveys suggesting that some volcanoes could yield a gigawatt of power. That's the equivalent of several million solar panels or 500 wind turbines from each. The total untapped resource is estimated to be in the region of 10GW.
Why not? It works great for Iceland.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by ewk on Friday November 03 2017, @12:30PM (2 children)
By cooling down the high temperature steam sufficiently, they get additional (irrigation) water as well.
Although it might have to be a tad purified first to be used for drinking or irrigation purposes.
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(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Friday November 03 2017, @12:35PM
(Score: 2) by rts008 on Friday November 03 2017, @07:53PM
Fractional distillation added to the process for pure water?
This subject is not in any area of expertise I possess, but it seems possible. I can imagine there might be waste disposal/recycling issues, but it sounds feasible to me.
I don't know for sure, but it seems doable.
(Score: 2) by LVDOVICVS on Friday November 03 2017, @01:47PM (6 children)
< fable > Mankind finds crap in ground useful and so starts using it as fast as possible without considering whether there might be ramifications. < /fable >
Where have I heard this story before?
I haven't got a clue about the numbers, but has there ever been an environmental impact study done in relation to taking this energy out of the geothermal system? It would appear this is a very closed system in that what's taken out cannot ever be regenerated. Could this pose problems in the future? I'd like to know before we turn the planet into an ice cube if possible.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by arcz on Friday November 03 2017, @02:46PM
While that's sort of true it's not like it's all leftover heat from earth's formation. Relatively speaking, the earth's crust isn't a particularly good insulator. Most of the heat is lost over time. However, the earth's core is constantly heated by radioactive decay. They balance out to the current state of affairs, and it's actually warming the planet. (global warming? it's a contributing factor to planetary thermal energy anyway.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 03 2017, @02:56PM (1 child)
My hunch is that it's going to be orders of magnitude less than anything that could make a difference.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 03 2017, @05:56PM
That is the way oil extraction started. Then we got better at it, exported it to other countries, and now we are extracting oil much faster than it is being produced.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday November 03 2017, @08:48PM (1 child)
Well, Iceland, [scientificamerican.com]and Hawaii [hawaiianelectric.com], and a few other places are using geothermal for power a long, and so far neither has frozen up.
There is nothing new here other than the location. That heat was escaping to the atmosphere anyway, and having it run a toaster, a factory, or a light-bulb along the way adds no net change to the system. The heat was coming out of the ground anyway.
Ethiopia is also ideally located for Solar Power, and, I suspect you would have no problem with that. The great sandy regions bake in it every day.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 04 2017, @10:37AM
Africa could be the richest continent on the planet, but I guess the people aren't interested. They'd rather fight wars and kill each other off, making the white man rich in the process. Do they know what they are doing to themselves?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 04 2017, @09:26AM
To me the greater danger is not the heat extraction itself but the drilling and water/liquid pumping to extract the heat... Stuff could go wrong and make volcanoes more likely to erupt or increase the odds of earthquakes.
(Score: 4, Funny) by takyon on Friday November 03 2017, @02:28PM (1 child)
When I heard satellites I imagined the microwave power from SimCity 2000. Maybe we could beam solar power into the volcanoes to turbocharge them.
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(Score: 2) by rts008 on Friday November 03 2017, @08:00PM
Gadzooks!
Meh, what could possibly go wrong. It's not like the sunlight wouldn't hit earth anyhow. ;)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 03 2017, @03:13PM
https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/1920x1080/p02c9kft.jpg [bbci.co.uk]
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday November 03 2017, @05:07PM
Iceland are the current domain experts in getting power out of volcanoes. They do it profitably and usefully. But it depends a lot on just what the underlying strata are.
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