Enhanced Geothermal Power

Every countries have problems of energy sustainability, this was due to the limited supply of oil and gas. Now, oil and gas are the main energy source in the world so that the energy current depends on the availability of oil and gas. On the other hand, the energy demand is increasing, the main factors are increasing people population and industrial sector. Energy conservation needs to be done to solve the problem, we have to find a replacement energy to achieve national energy sustainability.

Source: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2014/04/21/geothermal-power.html 

Geothermal power is the one solution in energy crisis, it’s one of renewable energy, cost effective, reliable, sustainable, and environmentally friendly but has historically been limited to areas near tectonic plate boundaries. Recent technological advances have dramatically expanded the range and size of viable resources, especially for applications such as home heating, opening a potential for widespread exploitation. Geothermal wells release greenhouse gases trapped deep within the earth, but these emissions are much lower per energy unit than those of fossil fuels. As a result, geothermal power has the potential to help mitigate global warming if widely deployed in place of fossil fuels.

In the applying for geothermal energy sources, should have the following parameters: A high temperature (at least 1500 C below ground), A great scent pressure (at least 3.5 atmosphere), Considerable volume of steam (10 tons per hour = 1000 KW electricity), A maximum of 3000 meters well’s depth, and the Steam does not cause rust (pH should be more than 6).

There is no tool to measure directly some parameters in geothermal, it’s not like well logging in oil and gas, which doing one measuring can measure some parameter in petrophysics such as density log, gamma ray log, sonic log, caliper log, resistivity log, neutron log, and many others logging.

Here we offer a tool that can be used to measure temperature, pressure, pH, and concentration of gas in geothermal production. This tool has same concept with wireline logging in oil and gas, but this tool will measure these parameters in the field effectively and efficiently, and even this tool can measure at surface and also in the depth of well.

We would like to make a system using sensors that each of them can sense the parameter above. The sensors they are thermocouple, Taguchi Gas Sensor ( TGS ), vibration sensor, and pH sensor. Thermocouple is used to measure well temperature, Taguchi Gas Sensor ( TGS ) is used to measure concentration of well gas and surface gas which produced from fumarolic and solfataric, The vibration sensor is used to measure well pressure, and the last pH sensor is used to measure pH concentration of well.

Of course, all of the sensors are integrated which controlled by microcontroller in. The microcontroller must process all the data received from the sensors and directly process it. The final output can be seen in the display. The tool we designed may be doable. Considering all of the stuff are widely used in many applications and reasonably priced. This tool might answer the present problem concerning geothermal.

With optimizing of geothermal power can reduce dependence of fossil energy (Oil, Gas, and Coal), reduce greenhouse effect hopefully, can help geothermal development and increasing geothermal production, in the last with existing of this tool can solve energy crisis.