Geothermal power plants and 5 advantages of geothermal energy

    

    On 4 July 1904, prinle piero ginori lonti tested the first geothermal power generator in larderello italy. It successfully glows 4 bulbs. later, In 1911 the world"s first commercial geothermal power plant was built.

Image by WikiImages from Pixabay

What is the geothermal energy ?

    The geothermal energy is the energy produced by the earth itself in form of heat at the center of the earth. The fact is that the earth outer core is very hot like the surface temperature of the sun having the temperature of around 5000*c.

    

Geothermal energy conversion

    You may ask a question how the geothermal energy is converted in to electrical energy. There are some places in the earth having the hotspots of geothermal energy. The naturally occurring hydrothermal reservoir above the surface of earth produces hot water and steam. 

    The hot water and steam in the natural hydrothermal reservoir are harvest to the purpose of generating electricity by the turbine through the condenser. 

    The geothermal energy is converted into mechanical energy by the shaft turbines and then the mechanical energy is converted into electrical energy by the electric generator.

Geothermal energy and the ring of fire

Gringer, distributed under a Public domain.

    The volcanically active and earthquake prone region in the Pacific ocean is known as ring of fire. Because it contains many high temperature geothermal systems associated with active volcano.

Operation of geothermal power plant

image credit: Rxn111130, distributed under a CC BY-SA 4.0 licenses.

    Basically there are three different of operation of geothermal power plant.

• Dry steam power plant
• Flash steam power plant
• Binary cycle power plant

Dry steam geothermal power plant

    This is one of the straight methods of power generation where the hydro thermal reservoir emits steam. Normally the water is injected into the subsurface of ground to produce the steam.

    

Flash steam geothermal power plant

    In this method, the water in injected in to the sub surface or ground to heat the water. Normally, the flash hydro thermal systems of about 200*c or more. It can capable of producing steam at pressure sufficient to drive the turbine.

     These systems are in porus and permeable rock saturated with water. The hot water from the pipe is separated as steam and water. The steam flash the turbine to produce electricity.

Binary cycle geothermal power plant 

    The main advantage of this method is to produce electricity although the temperature is moderated in subsurface. The geothermal water is used to boil a low boiling point fluid is called as working fluid. Whose vapor is them drives a generator turbine. The water is injected back in to the sub surface to extend this cyclic process of hydrothermal reservoir.

Advantages of geothermal energy

• Geothermal energy is renewable energy because once water or steam is used, it can be pumped back into the ground.
• It is also clean energy.
• Geothermal power plants, unlike plants that fossil fuels, do not produce green house gases that can be harmful to the atmosphere.
• Geothermal energy is easy on the local environment because the power plants do not require the clearing of large areas of land, damming of rivers or mining like other energy sources.
• It is inexpensive to use. Once a geothermal system is installed, the source of energy is free to use and because the plants use very few moving parts, there are generally low maintenance costs involved.

Conclusion

    One of the cleanest renewable energy sources available under ground. But we should aware of earthquake because of artificial drilling.

Comment

     Why geothermal energy is known for clean energy?