The company plans to create the world’s deepest holes and harvest geothermal energy at a scale that could satisfy human energy consumption
Quaise Energy wants to repurpose coal and gas plants into deep geothermal wells by using X-rays to melt rocksMIT spinout Quaise Energy is working to create geothermal wells made from the deepest holes in the world.There’s an abandoned coal power plant in upstate New York that most people regard as a useless relic. But MIT’s Paul Woskov sees things differently.
The plan would be easier to dismiss as unrealistic if it were based on a new and unproven technology. But Quaise’s drilling systems center around a microwave-emitting device called a gyrotron that has been used in research and manufacturing for decades. As power from other renewable energy sources has exploded in recent decades, geothermal energy has plateaued, mainly because geothermal plants only exist in places where natural conditions allow for energy extraction at relatively shallow depths of up to 400 feet beneath the Earth’s surface. At a certain point, conventional drilling becomes impractical because deeper crust is both hotter and harder, which wears down mechanical drill bits.
With the larger machine, the team hopes to vaporize a hole 10 times the depth of Woskov’s lab experiments. That is expected to be accomplished by the end of this year. After that, the team will vaporize a hole 10 times the depth of the previous one — what Houde calls a 100-to-1 hole. The company plans to begin harvesting energy from pilot geothermal wells that reach rock temperatures at up to 500°C by 2026. From there, the team hopes to begin repurposing coal and natural gas plants using its system.
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