Cleaning Up Power Plants
According to the article, Geothermal power plants could also consume CO2, such a process could increase power production from hydrothermal plants by greater than 50%.
Hydrothermal power plants function by sending water deep into the Earth, where it becomes heated by the geothermal activity there. The heated water is then pumped out and used to run turbines that generate electricity. Carbon dioxide would run through the system far more efficiently, even though carbon dioxide itself can't hold as much energy as water does.
Another benefit is that this carbon dioxide could be obtained from the output of other power plants, such as coal-burning plants. Obviously, any transition to this sort of system would require a lot of logistical considerations of how to transfer the carbon dioxide required, but the study indicates that it might be worthwhile and feasible.
Comments
Couldn’t the carbon in carbon dioxide be bound into a solid somehow? One expects it would take energy. But once the carbon was a solid, storage should be trivial. No need to put the coal burning plan next to the geothermal plant (which is already producing power, so likely, there’s no need for another nearby power plant…).
Better by half would be to take the waste heat from the power plant, and distribute it for heating buildings and homes. Purdue University does this with it’s on-site power plant. For most plants, this heat is radiated into space via hyperbolic cooling towers.
While we’re at it, it might be nice to see how quickly insulating your house, adding passive solar heating, etc., pays for itself, using real numbers. Say, you have a 1200 square foot home at 40 degrees North, with 30% sunny days or something.