Replies

2 posted on 01/16/2012 7:28:33 AM PST by musicman (Until I see the REAL Long Form Vault BC, he's just "PRES__ENT" Obama = Without "ID")

The problem is that if you just pump the water into the ground and let direct action heat it it also picks up a lot of minerals and salts from the volcanic rock around it. It would be like sand blasting the inside of your turbine. Saying that turbines don't like hard water is something of an understatement. So you have to use a heat exchanger to transfer heat from the hard water coming out of the ground to “clean” water used for the turbine. But now you have another point of heat loss to the water coming out of the ground needs to be very hot or you end up with saturated steam in your turbine loop.

13 posted on 01/16/2012 7:37:38 AM PST by GonzoGOP (There are millions of paranoid people in the world and they are all out to get me.)

And how much energy does it take to pump the water into the volcano? What is the ‘gain’?