Iceland Deep Drilling Project

The Iceland Deep Drilling Project (IDDP) is a geothermal project established in 2000 by a consortium of the National Energy Authority of Iceland (Orkustofnun/OS) and four of Iceland's leading energy companies: Hitaveita Suðurnesja (HS), Landsvirkjun, Orkuveita Reykjavíkur and Mannvit Engineering. The consortium is referred to as "Deep Vision".^[1]^[2]^[3]

The aim is to improve the economics of geothermal energy production. Its strategy is to look at the usefulness of supercritical hydrothermal fluids as an economic energy source. This necessitates drilling to depths of greater than 4,000 metres (13,000 ft) in order to tap the temperatures of more than 400 °C (750 °F). The drilling is at a rifted plate margin on the mid-oceanic ridge.^[2] Producing steam from a well in a reservoir hotter than 450 °C (840 °F)—at a proposed rate of around 0.67 cubic metres per second (24 cu ft/s) should be sufficient to generate around 45 MW. If this is correct, then the project could be a major step towards developing high-temperature geothermal resources.^[4]

"Deep Vision" recognized at its inception that much research would be needed regarding the poorly understood supercritical environment and as such sought to promote inclusion of the wider scientific community.^[1]

Funding has come from the members of the consortium, the International Continental Scientific Drilling Program and the US National Science Foundation.^[2]

This project has also been used for purposes such as university research. Researchers from UC Davis, UC Riverside, Stanford University, and the University of Oregon have taken the opportunity to collaborate with each other and the IDDP. They have aimed their investigation to gain information about extracting energy from hot rocks on land. To do this, they have been gathering important information from the borehole they sunk where seawater circulates through deep, hot rock. This should give important new clues about black smokers, hydrothermal vents that spew minerals and superheated water deep below the ocean. These support unique microorganism communities living within them.^[5]

YouTube Encyclopedic

1/3
Views:
7 747 725
2 876
171 339

Transcription

Deep in western Russia, the frigid desert contains the remnants of one of the most ambitious scientific experiments ever performed. It's a ruin now, a wasteland of jagged metal and crumbling concrete. If you search around long enough, you will find a rusted disc, bolted to the earth. So unassuming that you might even try to pick it up. But you won't be able to. It's the welded-shut cap of a borehole that plummets more than twelve kilometers into the earth, deeper than the deepest depths of the ocean. It's the deepest hole on earth. It's called the Kola Superdeep Borehole, and its existence has nothing to do with petroleum exploration. Rather, when drilling began in 1970, Soviet scientists hoped to eventually drill down to fifteen thousand meters in order to gain a better understanding of the nature of the Earth's crust. Because the truth is, we know less about what's under our feet than what's on the other side of the solar system. They drilled on and off for twenty-four years, and though they didn't quite reach their goal when work came to a halt in 1994, the engineers had reached a record depth: 12,262 meters, a record that still stands today. Two decades later, the Kola Borehole remains a remarkable technological and scientific acheivement. To drill it, engineers devised a new method by which only the drill bit at the end of the shaft was rotated, the lubricant, in this case, pressurized drilling mud, was pumped down through a custom drill bit, allowing it to spin. Instruments had to be invented to take measurements at the bottom of the hole. What did we learn by drilling a third of the way through the Baltic continental crust? For one, there's water down there, at depths scientists didn't believe water could be found. They suspect that the water formed from hydrogen and oxygen that were squeezed out of rock crystals due to crazy high levels of pressure that far down. Unlike groundwater, this water originated from the rock minerals themselves. Never before had this been observed. Also surpising, how about microscopic fossils discovered by Russians at depths of up to 6.7 kilometers? Researchers catalogued twenty-four species of single-cell plankton microfossils over the course of the project, and they weren't found in the kinds of deposits we're used to finding them, like limestone and silica. These were covered by organic carbon and nitrogen compounds, preserved thanks to those high pressures and high temperatures so far below the surface. As for those temperatures, by the time the engineers broke through the twelve kilometer mark, where rock samples were dated at 2.7 billion years old, the heat became a major issue. Researchers thought the temperature of the rocks would be about 100 degrees Celsius. What they found were temperatures in excess of 180 degrees. It was this heat that caused the drilling to come to a stop. Engineers described the rocks at 12 kilometers as acting more like plastic than rock. Of course, as astonishing as this project was, the Kola Superdeep Borehole only made it through a tiny fraction of the Earth's layers. 12 kilometers is three times as deep as humans have ever gone, but the eath's mantle desn't even begin until about 35 kilometers below the surface. The mantle then continues for another twenty-eight hundred kilometers; the center of the inner core: more than sixty-three hundred kilometers below the surface. Put another way, this borehole which took 24 years to drill, made it roughly 0.002 percent of the way to the middle of the Earth. It's a big planet, you guys. Thank you for watching this SciShow Dose, especially to our Subbable subscribers. To learn how you can support us, just go to subbable.com to learn more. And be sure to check out our new channel, SciShow Space, for the latest in space news, and weekly forays into the fascinating depths of the cosmos. If you have any questions, you can find us on Facebook and Twitter, and as always, in the comments below, and if you want to keep getting smarter with us, you can go to youtube.com/scishow and subscribe.

First Well, IDDP-1

The 49th Volume of the journal Geothermics, released in January 2014, is entirely dedicated to the first well of the IDDP.

The borehole of this well was unintentionally drilled into a magma reservoir in 2009. The hole was initially planned to drill down to hot rock below 4,000 metres (13,000 ft), but drilling was ceased when the drill struck magma at only 2,100 metres (6,900 ft) deep. This same occurrence has only been recorded once, in a Hawaiian geothermal well in 2007, but in that instance, it resulted in the sealing and abandonment of the hole.^[6]

In IDDP-1 the decision was made to continue the experimental well, and upon inserting cold water into the well, which was over 900 °C (1,650 °F). The resultant well was the first operational Magma-EGS, and was at the time the most powerful geothermal well ever drilled. While not producing electricity on the grid, it was calculated that the output of the well would have been sufficient to produce 36 MW of electricity.^[7] The well was eventually shut down after a valve failure occurred while attempting to connect the output to a central generator.^[8]

Second Well (continuation of an old borehole), IDDP-2

Five years before IDDP-1 was made, a borehole was drilled at Reykjanesvirkjun. It was named RN-15 or REY H015 (Reykjanes-15) and is just one of many geothermal boreholes drilled in the Reykjanes peninsula since 1956. It reached a maximum depth of 2.5 km (1.55 mi).^[9]

It was always known that RN-15 could be deepened, after a good result of the drilling.^[10] About 10 years later, IDDP decided to continue drilling under the project name IDDP-2.^[11] The plan was to reach a maximum depth of 5 km (3.11 mi) before the end of 2016, making it by far the deepest borehole in Iceland.^[12] Scientists were hoping to reach a temperature of 500 °C (930 °F),^[13]^[14] which would be the hottest blast of any hole in the world, breaking the former record of the IDDP-1 Krafla borehole.^[15]

Drilling began on August 11, 2016, and was completed 167 days later on January 25, 2017. The final depth was 4,659 metres (15,285 ft), with a temperature of 427 °C (800 °F) and fluid pressure of 340 bars (4,900 psi). Core samples were taken, showing rocks at the bottom that appeared to be permeable, and fluids in supercritical conditions were successfully reached, accomplishing all of the main objectives of the drilling operation.^[16]

References

^ ^a ^b "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 6 September 2008. Retrieved 4 August 2009.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
^ ^a ^b ^c "About « IDDP". iddp.is. Retrieved 17 February 2015.
^ Friðleifsson, G.Ó.; Elders, W.A.; Albertsson, A. (January 2014). "The concept of the Iceland deep drilling project". Geothermics. 49: 2–8. Bibcode:2014Geoth..49....2F. doi:10.1016/j.geothermics.2013.03.004.
^ Runyon, Jennifer (13 November 2007). "Deep Vision: Big Energy from Way, Way Down". Renewable Energy World. Retrieved 16 August 2020.
^ Fell, Andy (7 November 2007). "Deep Drilling for 'Black Smoker' Clues". UC Davis News & Information. Retrieved 17 February 2015.
^ "World's first magma-enhanced geothermal system created in Iceland". ScienceDaily. Retrieved 17 February 2015.
^ http://iddp.is/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/News-in-English-16-01-2014.pdf World's first magma-EGS system created, 16 January 2014
^ "SAGA Reports « IDDP". iddp.is. Retrieved 17 February 2015.
^ "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 7 October 2016. Retrieved 13 September 2016.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
^ http://iddp.is/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/SAGA_REPORT_2006.pdf^{[bare URL PDF]}
^ http://iddp.is/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/SAGA-REPORT-No-10.pdf^{[bare URL PDF]}
^ "Bora dýpstu holu landsins á Reykjanesi". 12 September 2016.
^ http://iddp.is/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Uppl%C3%BDsingaskilti_rev.pdf^{[bare URL PDF]}
^ "Bora dýpstu holu Íslands - hittu síðast í glóandi kviku - Vísir". 26 April 2016.
^ "Djúpborun - Orka úr 100% endurnýjanlegum orkugjöfum".
^ "The drilling of the Iceland Deep Drilling Project geothermal well at Reykjanes has been successfully completed" (PDF). Retrieved 14 March 2020.

Bibliography

Fridleifsson, G.O., and Albertsson, A., 2000. Deep geothermal drilling at Reykjanes Ridge: opportunity for an international collaboration. In Proceedings of the World Geothermal Congress 2000, Japan: Reykjavik, Iceland (International Geothermal Association, Inc.), 3701–3706.
Fell, A., & Zierenberg, R. (7 November 2007). Deep Drilling for "Black Smoker" Clues : UC Davis News & Information. http://news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.lasso?id=8420

External links

This page was last edited on 1 November 2023, at 12:20

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia