How Can the Laser Drill Solve Our Energy Crisis?
Drill Geothermal Wells to Produce Cheap Electricity
One of the outcomes of the missile defense research of the 1980s and 1990s was the development of laser technologies, and these technologies now promise to help meet our growing energy demands by decreasing the time to drill through rock by 10 to 100 times that of conventional drilling.
The natural gas and oil industries are of course very interested. If a laser drill can penetrate solid granite at the same rate as conventional drilling penetrates softer rock, then gas and oil fields that were previously uneconomical to tap would become available. However, that is not the only use for laser drills.
Laser Drill Abilities: Burn Through Any Rock at Any Angle
The laser drill has several interesting abilities. It can burn through virtually any rock and at any angle from straight vertical to straight horizontal. The bit itself is relatively small. One prototype at the Colorado School of Mines is about the size of a shoebox. Where conventional drill bits have to be changed during the drilling process, the laser drill just keeps on burning through rock until the drill hole is finished.
Depending on the power of the laser, it can chip, melt or vaporize the rock, and a single laser can do all three with variable power. With the melting power setting, the laser drill can self-case its own drill hole.
Geothermal Wells for Electrical Generation
With these unique and useful capabilities, another application for the laser drill becomes apparent--drilling geothermal wells for the generation of electricity. This application brings with it the potential for providing cheap electricity literally anywhere on the face of the earth.
As one drills deeper into the earth and approaches the magma, the temperature of the rock becomes hot enough to produce high-energy steam. High-energy steam at about 1,000 degrees Farenheit is what drivers every coal-fired and nuclear power plant in the world.
The power plant runs very pure water through a closed system near to the heat of the coal furnace or nuclear reactor. The heat turns the water into steam, and the steam drives the turbines that turn the generators which create the electricity.
Replace Coal Furnace or Nuclear Reactor with Geothermal Well
If one could eliminate the coal furnace or nuclear reactor, replacing it with simply a closed pipe system that heats the pure water with geothermal energy, then not only does the power plant become extremely ecologically friendly, but tremendous overheads are immediately eliminated.
Fuel would cost nothing because no fuel is burned. Waste products from burning coal or consuming nuclear fuel would not exist. The handling of fuel and waste would not be needed, nor would the mining of coal and uranium.
The Colorado School of Mines has been researching laser drill technology for over a decade, beginning in the 1990s when government mandates released the missile defense system laser technologies to non-military industries and organizations. In 2003 Boeing donated six laser technology patents to the School.
In 2004 Dr. Ramona M. Graves of the School published several papers that outlined field studies with the laser drill, what needed to be done next and the potential uses of the laser drill. Among these uses appeared the drilling of geothermal wells.
Ubiquitous power plants around the world that use the heat of the earth to produce electricity could be the answer to our present and future energy demands. Industry has already demonstrated that electricity is good for all our energy needs, whether directly or indirectly from cracking water into hydrogen and oxygen.
With cheap electricity generated from geothermal heat, the world will no longer need to burn fossil or nuclear fuels simply to boil water.
