A geothermal reserve has the stored heat of 5 x 1019J. If the overall efficiency of a
geothermal power plant based on this reserve is 0.04, how much power can be produced by
the plant in 1 year
Answers
Answer:
A little known difficulty with geothermal power is the contamination of the steam used to bring the heat up. The outer core and lower mantle of the earth’s crust have a lot of the lighter metals in them. They essentially have floated outward over billions of years. Arsenic is one.
What do you do with arsenic in large quantities? Even coal ash is a problem simply because there is so much of it that unhealthy contaminants end up being trouble. Likewise if we actually could bore deep enough holes then we would have to deal with the collateral problems of contamination.
It is quite difficult to spin a shaft that is long enough to reach sufficiently hot material with a drilling machine. We have not worked out the details well to get geothermal in any but the most promising heat resources.