Using Geothermal Energy In Your Home

There's a monster under your feet

There's a monster under your feet. Deep, deep under the ground, molten rock, or magma, rises slowly through fissures in the rocky crust of the earth. While a small amount of magma actually escapes the earth's crust, most of it sits below the surface, heating the rock and water above it. If you've ever gone bathing in a hot spring, watched a geyser spout up in the air, or observed bubbling mud holes, you have experienced the power of geothermal energy.

There are different ways of utilizing geothermal energy in your home. We will look at three different ways in his article.

Electricity

Geothermal energy can be used to produce electricity. Geothermal electric plants capture the heat of geothermal water in three different ways, cleanly producing electricity that can be used to turn on your lights, run your vacuum, or cook your dinner. Because geothermal power plants do not produce any smoky emissions, the air will be much clearer near one of these plants than around power plants that make use of coal.

By placing a power plant over a dry steam reservoir, dry steam can be piped up from the earth to turn large turbines. As the blades spin, they turn the turbine generator, producing electricity.

Flash power plants draw water, heated by magma, up through pipes. As the pressure is reduced, some of the hot water flashes into steam, which spins the turbine generator, producing electricity.

Binary power plants operate similarly to flash power plants, except the heated water drawn up from the earth is used to heat another liquid with a lower boiling point. As this second liquid heats and boils, the steam is again used to generate electricity.

Geothermal Water

Individual homes, office buildings, or entire blocks of buildings can be heated by geothermal water. In a block, or district, of buildings, for example, a central plant pumps heated, underground water up to the surface; the water is then used to heat buildings and sidewalks during the cold winter months.

Geothermal Heat Pumps

Dig down a few feet underground, and you'll find the temperature will stay stable at 55 to 60 degrees Fahrenheit. This consistency in temperature can be exploited to heat or cool your home very cheaply and cleanly. A geothermal heat pump is a series of buried metal tubes. Water is pumped through the tubes, which go from your house down into the earth, and then loop back up to your home. In summer, for example, the water will become naturally heated the closer it is to the surface of the earth. This water then travels through the tubes, where it is cooled, and then returns to the surface to cool your home and carry away heat. The geothermal pumps require very little electricity to use and produce no waste.

by: Art Gib

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