Geothermal Magma Energy to Power Iceland
30 April, 2024
Harness the Energy
Tapping into the earth for energy sources has been a dream of mankind for millennia. Some of the first innovations in using earth’s natural resources was water for power. Conceived in China during the Han Dynasty between 202 BC and 9 AD, trip hammers powered by a vertical-set water wheel were used to pound and hull grain, break ore, and in early paper-making. The Greeks used water wheels for grinding wheat into flour more than 2,000 years ago, while the Egyptians used Archimedes water screws for irrigation during the third century BC.
The modern hydropower turbine began in the mid-1700s when a French hydraulic and military engineer, Bernard Forest de Bélidor, theorized how it could be done in his book, Architecture Hydraulique. In 1881, a dynamo connected to a turbine in a flour mill provided street lighting at Niagara Falls, New York. Then, alternating current, allowed power to be transmitted longer distances which was proven to work at scale at the hydropower plant at the Redlands Power Plant in California in 1893.
Old Ideas Spawn New Energy Technologies and Energy Exploration
Iceland continues to prove that Jules Verne’s “Journey to the Center of the Earth” was a work of fiction. The vast majority of homes in Iceland use heat sourced from below the earth’s surface. Iceland currently has 6 operational geothermal plants that harness energy and use it to power homes, schools, busineses and anything that may need electricity.
In 2026, Iceland’s Krafla Magma Testbed (KMT) project will drill into a volcano’s magma chamber, seeking to tap into its super-hot fumes to generate geothermal energy at a scale that has never been attempted before. Volcanic regions have long been using volcanoes to generate geothermal energy, but this will mark the first time a magma chamber has been directly drilled into for energy harvesting. Directly drilling into a magma chamber has been done before, but that drilling was an accident that occured on a a previous mission near the Krafla volcanic caldera. Researchers tried to get near the chamber but ended up drilling straight into it. This “accident” showed scientists that drilling into a magma chamber does not cause the volcano to erupt. What a way to find that out! The magma chamber did destroy the drill well because of the powerful 800-degree+ heat. Currently there are two, 30 mw plants close to the Krafla volcano.
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Hellisheiði geothermal power station in Iceland (Credit: Wikimemdia Commons/Mathieu Neville)