50 Deep Geothermal Ippolyti Dellatolas, Ali Irani, and Graham Turk Technology Overview While conventional geothermal borehole fields store heat seasonally underground at depths around 100m to 150m, deep geothermal wells reach to depths with elevated ground temperatures. Heat recuperated from such depths constitute a renewable energy source that does not need to be seasonally balanced. Globally, the ground temperature rises with depth at around 25oC/km. Quaise Energy (Quaise), a company developing deep geothermal technologies, has evaluated the potential to convert MIT’s Central Utility Plant (CUP) to geothermal energy and estimates a gradient of 16.25 oC/km for the ground below our campus. Ground heat can be used for either heating only or heating and electricity generation. At 2km and a temperature of 50oC, MIT could use deep geothermal for heating buildings directly. At 20km depth, the estimated ground temperature is 325oC would allow for a on-surface production temperature of approximately 275oC which could be used to generate power via Flash Steam Power Generation. Figure 14 Deep geothermal drilling down to 2km in Paris (Celsius Energy Both types of deep geothermal could be used by MIT to provide the missing energy that we need to condition our buildings year-round. If we opt for direct heating only, several companies using conventional drilling technologies could be employed. As an example case study, Celsius Energy recently drilled a deep geothermal borehole field to heat 8,000 homes near Paris.
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