Day dreaming and came up with new power source.

[AyashiKaibutsu]

I was just day dreaming and one thought lead to another and I came to this. What if someone built a tunnel at and angle that goes really far down to where it starts getting hot from the earths core and then builds another tunnel going straight up from there. Then you pour water down the sloped tunnel it gets heated at the bottom and then comes back up as steam. You make the system closed circuit so you don't need to worry about getting tons of water. It's like articial geothermal that you could make on a scale that would be useful.

Probably not possible, but it's an ammusing idea.

 

[Mayax]

You would essentially be creating a man-made volcano in which case you could essentially do the same by just building a geothermal plant on an active volcano. In either case, you're sitting on a time-bomb. Geothermal energy is one they've been working on a long time but the problems associated are still insurmountable right now.

 

[gururu]

nature already did that. they are called hot springs and fountains.

 

[f95toli]

and this techniques is already in use. However, the water is usually not very hot so you need to use heat exchangers .

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

but if you went really deep rather then tapping surface sources you could make it as big as you like and without the stability problems.

 

[bendixG15]

Iceland makes great use of geothermal heat, from heating homes to generating electricity.

 

[Cogman]

😛 Not new 🙂 Basicly this was tried, but the drill head was not strong enough to penitrate the earths crust. As I recall, the deapest mines reach about 1.5 miles down, Given that is a long ways, they only heat up to 150F un-airconditioned. You have to be a little closer then that to get the full effect.

 

[Cogman]

BTW, the drill was atempted off shore of calafornia (if I remember correctly) and it was straight down instead of angled. Also, after re-reading the origional post the steam would coold down too rapidly to be of any use. However maybe if you lined the hole with Either Steamboat like fans attached to generators, or a corkscrew shaft with fines pointing at a 45* angle relitive to the earth and the rim of the screw. It would be an interesting superstructure.

 

[jagec]

costs too much to be practical. You gotta use geothermal where nature already provides heat near the surface.