Founded in 2020, US-based startup Quaise Energy is actively looking for investors to implement a project to generate geothermal energy through ultra-deep wells. To date, the startup has already managed to attract 63 million dollars.
The essence of the idea is to combine traditional drilling methods using gyrotrons, robust linear-beam vacuum tubes with a power of 1 megawatt, generating millimeter-wave electromagnetic waves in a powerful magnetic field.
In the process of developing renewable sources of clean energy, scientists have almost forgotten about geothermal energy, the reserves of which are practically inexhaustible. The problem is that one can get it only in places of active volcanic activity.
However, it is quite possible to get to it in quieter places – however, and for this one has to drill ultra-deep wells. Alas, today, there are practically no corresponding technologies for this.
The only successful example is the Kola super-deep well with more than 12,000 meters. It took the drillers 20 years (1970-1990). Unfortunately, since 1994 this unique object has been mothballed.
To drill deeper wells, many complex engineering problems will have to be solved, particularly to find a technology for crushing solid compacted rocks and extracting them to the surface.
At the same time, special equipment will have to work at temperatures of about 200 degrees, ensuring the rotation of the drills at a great distance from the surface.
The best option would be to use a megawatt-power gyrotron. Quaise specialists intend to reach a depth of 20 km in a few months, where temperatures reach 500 degrees.
Further, water will be pumped there, turned into steam, and then fed to the turbines of the thermal power plant for the subsequent generation of electricity.
By 2028, the company intends to re-equip the old coal-fired thermal power plants that were decommissioned for this purpose.