New Microwave Beam 'Drilling' Method May Unlock Vast Source of 'Clean' Energy

The company behind this geothermal scheme now plans to start harvesting energy from pilot wells reaching into the “super-hot” depths of our planet, by 2026.

A Massachusetts Institute of Techology (MIT) spin-off called Quaise Energy has set its sights on implementing a new concept of tapping into geothermal energy.

According to a press release from MIT, the concept in question involves vaporizing rock using a microwave-emitting device called gyrotron and thus drilling deep holes that would allow harvesting geothermal energy “at a scale that could satisfy human energy consumption for millions of years”.

Paul Woskov, research engineer at MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center and author of this idea, set his sights on using this approach to retrofit an abandoned coal power plant to turn it into a carbon-free power-generating facility.

And Quaise Energy, which is commercializing Woskov’s work, hopes that, if conversion of that power plant works out, then the same process could be used for other coal and gas power plants.

“We believe, because of Paul’s work at MIT over the past decade, that most if not all of the core physics questions have been answered and addressed,” said Matt Houde, one of the Quaise Energy’s founders. “It’s really engineering challenges we have to answer, which doesn’t mean they’re easy to solve, but we’re not working against the laws of physics, to which there is no answer.”

The company intends to start harvesting energy from pilot geothermal vents that would reach areas in the depths of our planet with temperatures up to 500 degrees Celsius, by 2026.

“We believe, if we can drill down to 20 kilometers, we can access these super-hot temperatures in more than 90 percent of locations around the globe,” Houde remarked.

He also pointed out that, with the sort of temperatures they would be harvesting, they would produce steam “very close to, if not exceeding, the temperature that today’s coal and gas-fired power plants operate at".

“So, we can go to existing power plants and say, ‘We can replace 95 to 100 percent of your coal use by developing a geothermal field and producing steam from the Earth, at the same temperature you’re burning coal to run your turbine, directly replacing carbon emissions,” he explained.