[tony6789 (OP)]

i had a light bulb just go off!!! im so awsome! hehehe...if make electricity by ways of steam we have to burn coal to heat the water to make it steam. that is bad!...so what if we were to build a steam plant next to a volcano i mean we might as well use all the free hot lava there for energy use rite?

[neilep]

Seems like a great idea to me !!

we could also have Volcanno Fired Pizzas......hmm  delish !

Great Idea Tony !!.....good on ya !


Of course when the Volcano erupts...business would stop for that day !

[tony6789 (OP)]

u cud use one that is no longer active...

[another_someone]

The Icelanders have been doing it for some time.

http://www.worldenergy.org/wec-geis/edc/countries/Iceland.asp

Geothermal energy resulting from Iceland’s volcanic nature and its location on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge has been utilised on a commercial scale since 1930. The high-temperature resources are sited within the volcanic zone, whilst the low-temperature resources lie mostly in the peripheral area.

Approximately 50% of total primary energy is supplied by geothermal power and the percentage of electrical generation from geothermal resources more than doubled between 1996 and 1999 (7% growing to 16%): Iceland’s wealth of hydro-electric resources provided almost all of the balance.

Currently geothermal energy is mainly used for space heating, with about 86% of households being supplied, mostly via large district heating schemes. Reykjavik Energy, operator of the largest of the country’s 26 municipally-owned geothermal district heating schemes, supplies virtually the entire city (approximately 160 000 inhabitants) and four neighbouring communities.

Whilst 77% of the direct use of geothermal heat is used for space heating, 8% is used for industrial process heat, 6% for swimming pools, 4% for greenhouses, 3% for fish farming and 2% for snow melting. Total installed capacity for direct use was 1 469 MWt at end-1999: usage during the year amounted to 5 603 GWh.

In recent years there has been an expansion in Iceland’s energy-intensive industrial sector. To meet an increased demand for power, the capacity of geothermal plants has grown rapidly from 50 MWe and currently stands at 170 MWe. Geothermal electricity generation was 1 138 GWh in 1999, equivalent to 15.8% of total power output.

There are two conventional power plants operating: a 3 MWe back-pressure unit at Bjarnarflag and a 60 MWe double flash unit at Krafla. Svartsengi and Nesjavellir are both co-generation plants. At Svartsengi, the generation of power is secondary to that of pumping of geothermal brines for district heating: 45 MWe capacity is installed for power generation and 200 MWt for production of hot water. Hot water production has also been the primary purpose of Nesjavellir since it commenced operating in 1990. However, during 1998 60 MWe of capacity was brought on stream to generate power and it is now planned to increase this further to 76 MWe by 2005.

[Ben6789]

u cud use one that is no longer active...

HOw do we know that would still contain magma though?

[tony6789 (OP)]

ha so my idea was a good one! yay!

[Ben6789]

You haven't answered my question.  []

Maybe you don't know the answer?

[another_someone]

Don't care if it contains magma, you care if it contains heat - that is measurable - if it is hot, you can use it, if it is not hot, you cannot use it.  We assume the heat derives from the magma, but for the purposes of power generation, it does not matter if that assumption is correct or not.

[JimBob]

OK, Guys You want answers I could give you answers, I could give you the truth BUT YOU CANT" HANDLE THE TRUTH! (my web impression of Jack Nicholson in a "A Few Good Men" - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104257/)

ANY who,

Thermal energy is just that, thermal. The energy extracted from volcanic areas does not come from the direct contact of water and magma. It comes from either 1.) capping and controlling a large natural steam flow, which is not the norm, or 2.) by drilling wells into rocks covering what we think - as George mentioned - are magmatically heated rocks. This last method of production can be further subdivided into two types: the type where a well is drilled into the rock and a flow of water from the rock is established, as with a normal well, or a well is drilled into hot rock until the temperature at the bottom of the drill hole is above about 230-240°F. At this point, a long string of pipe is cemented into the hole and a string of tubing is run into the well inside this hole. For example a string of 9-5/8" pipe with a high compression strength is cemented into a well and string of tubing 2-7/8" is run into the casing. Water is pumped down the tubing, vaporized, and comes back as either very hot water or stream and then processed to extract energy. This is a method used in California and areas where the heat flow from the earth isn't great enough to produce steam. 

There are advantages with both methods. The flow from natural steam wells produce (normally) greater flows of energy. But the natural steam is corrosive of both the pipe and the steam conversion system (I have worked locating places to drill for this type of system in Japan for Kyushu Electric Power Co. Since the pipe is corroded so easily the flowing water destroys the well fairly quickly. An almost constant drilling program is needed. With pumping water (or other heat-carrying fluid) down into a well to heat it, there is a much longer life for the well bore. In all but a few present geothermal energy plants there is also a large failure of wells due to earth movement that shears the casing in the well, effectively ending the production from the well. New wells must be drilled to replace these as well.

A new device developed here where I live is a small scale energy system that takes advantage of the normal increase of temperature with depth (geothermal gradient). It is now in production. See http://www.powertubeinc.com/


And yes Neil, stone age people rigged steam cooking ovens in pools of very hot volcanic pools.
 

[Guttedpiggy]

well, when the volcano erupts, your screwed, maybe there could be some placed over recently erupted bigggg volcanos that wont erupt for a while? or maybe they could be made over hot springs.

[JimBob]

The possibility of an eruption messing up a geothermal plant in "hot' areas is a possibility, but even though these areas are "active" over geologic time the chances of an eruption are about a million times LESS than being killed in an airplane crash, even if you are a frequent flyer.