They plan to drill the deepest hole on Earth to extract unlimited energy

The growing need for energy and the critical situation of the planet due to the use of fossil fuels is accelerating technological advances in the search for alternative sources. The same motivation has driven Quaise Energy, a spin-off company from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) formed in 2020, to embark on an ambitious project: to dig the deepest hole in the Earth to extract the geothermal energy.

As its name implies, geothermal energy is obtained from the heat inside the Earth. This clean, continuous and unlimited source of energy has been harnessed for several decades, but only in some areas of volcanic activity, such as Iceland, where the hot rock is much closer to the surface.

In the rest of the world, on the other hand, the geothermal source is very low, much more than the 12.3 kilometers of what today bears the title of the deepest hole on the planet, the Kola well, in Russia. Its realization in the eighties was a feat of engineering so far insurmountable.

But Quaise plans to go far beyond this limit.

To get deeper, the excavation equipment must operate at more than 180 degrees Celsius (°C), a temperature that makes the rock behave more like a plastic than a solid.

Quaise’s solution is to add a drilling method that requires no contact between the instrument and the rock. Its about gyrotron a device that produces millimeter waves of electromagnetic radiation to heat materials to the point of evaporation.

This is a technology that was born from research into nuclear fusion, the process that occurs in the heart of the Sun. Since the 1970s, the Soviet Union has used gyrotrons to heat plasma in experimental fusion reactors.

Quaise’s plan is to connect a megawatt-power gyrotron to a state-of-the-art drilling tool. In this way, they estimate that they will cross up to 20 kilometers of the earth’s crust in just over three months.

At these depths, anywhere on Earth, the temperature is above 500°C and the pressure is almost 200 megapascals (MPa), sufficient conditions to take advantage of the maximum potential of geothermal energy. How? pumping water

The water turns into a ‘supercritical’ fluid when it exceeds 374 °C and 22 MPa. In that hybrid state between liquid and gas, it returns as an infernal vapor to the plant, where it generates electricity.

“A power plant that uses supercritical water as its working fluid can extract up to 10 times more useful energy from each drop compared to other plants. Targeting supercritical conditions is key to achieving energy densities consistent with fossil fuels,” says Quaise.

Following recent venture capital funding, the company has already raised some $63 million. Using that and their seed funding, they hope that in two years they will have their teams deployed in the field to begin proof-of-concept operations. If this step is successful, they should have their first power-producing system in 2026.

But it doesn’t end there. Quaise plans by 2028 to start taking over coal-based power plants, which will gradually go out of business due to polluting emission restrictions, to transform them into geothermal plants.

These facilities already have the ability to convert steam into electricity, so Quaise should only concern itself with drilling the super-deep holes and using geothermal energy to spin those turbines without worsening global warming.

With more than 8,500 coal-fired power plants around the world, pouring holes in the earth’s surface doesn’t sound so bad anymore.

Source-larepublica.pe