Industry | Geothermal Power |
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Founded | 2018 |
Founder | Carlos Araque, Matt Houde, Aaron Mandell |
Headquarters | Cambridge, Massachusetts , |
Key people | Carlos Araque Chief Executive Officer |
Products | Millimeter-wave drilling |
Number of employees | 20+ |
Website | quaise |
Quaise, Inc was founded in 2018 to develop a millimeter-wave drilling system for converting existing power stations to use superdeep geothermal energy.[1] The system repurposes existing gyrotron technology to drill 20 kilometers beneath the surface, where temperatures exceed 400 °C. No fracking is required, avoiding the potential for earthquakes that have occurred in other geothermal systems.[2][3] Drilling using this technique is hoped to be fast, with boreholes aimed to be completed in 100 days[4] using existing 1MW gyrotrons.
Existing geothermal power stations can only be deployed in rare locations where adequate heat is located within 3 km of the surface.[5] These resources are of a comparatively low temperature, and require seismically risky stimulation techniques. Further, drilling at these depths is expensive and slow. {{Citation needed}}
Instead, Quaise plans to drill quickly to deep depths using a gyrotron and waveguide, vaporizing the rock by heating it. {{Citation needed}} Temperatures at 20 km depth are above the supercritical point of water, which allows ten times more energy to be transferred given the same volumetric flow.[6] The supercritical water is then used in a supercritical steam generator which may previously have been powered with fossil fuels. {{Citation needed}}
The approach proposes advantages compared with other power sources:
In October 2021, Quaise began initial testing of gyrotron boring at Oak Ridge National Laboratory[8] and plans to have a full-scale gyrotron drilling rig completed by 2024.[9] By 2026, the company hopes to have achieved 100MW of geothermal power output.[10] By 2028, Quaise aims to have converted an existing fossil-fuelled power plant to run on geothermal steam.{{Citation needed}}
Original source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaise.
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