Iceland is going to use new high-temperature wells for energy

Iceland for many of us is known, first of all, by the fact that geothermal energy is actively used there. Icelanders not only heat their homes with the heat of the planet itself and receive relatively inexpensive energy for the needs of their country, but also plan to supply surplus energy to the EU countries.

And to increase the efficiency of their geothermal stations, Icelanders are now conducting experiments on working with high-temperature wells (their depth is more than one and a half kilometers). And more or less detailed information on this project began to appear only now, despite the fact that the tests have been carried out for several years.
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Icelandic systems usually work with temperatures of 40-150 degrees Celsius, but not so long ago it was decided to drill deep wells to achieve a layer with liquid magma. Actually, in Iceland it is quite simple to do this, since this region is one of the most active on Earth in terms of volcanic activity (the fact is that the island is located on the crest of the North Atlantic global tectonic seam , along which the North American and Eurasian lithospheric plates).

The first well, drilled as part of the Deep Drilling Project (IDDP), reached a target at a depth of about 2 kilometers (1.3 miles). Thus, it became possible to bring the steam temperature to 450 degrees Celsius, which increases the efficiency of the geothermal power station. Actually, everything described was done in 2010, and two years in a row Icelanders worked on a drilled well with a high-temperature steam, until the time the well was closed for servicing in 2012. Now the goal of the project participants is to work with the well again, or to drill a new one.

All this was and is an experimental project that can be called very successful, because now there are all the prerequisites for using the energy of the subsoil in volcanically active regions much more efficiently than was possible until recently.

Via dvice