CHAPTER 15
Geothermal Energy
Dorp and Sam continued on their way to
the state of Idaho.
Sam told a joke.
“What
did one ocean say to another ocean?”
“Sigh.
I don’t know.”
“Nothing.
Oceans can’t talk, so they just wave to each other.”
“I
really don’t understand the porpoise of all these jokes.”
“That’s
a whale of a comeback, Mr. Dorp.”
“I wonder how many gallons of water are stored in bottles right now?” Sam
asked.
“Hmm.
When you consider all the types of bottled beverages that use water,
besides regular drinking water, I suspect there are billions of
gallons of water in private storage around the world. “
Dear
reader, if America had 300 million people, and if there were one
water heater for every five people, and if every water heater held 40
gallons of water, there would be 2.4 billion gallons just in home water heaters. That doesn’t count retail stores, office buildings,
schools, jails, hospitals, and military installations, all of which
can have really big heaters.
Beyond
that, think how many gallons of water are in water towers and city
water pipes? And what about car radiators?
Some predict there will be
over 1,000,000,000 cars in in the world by the year 2020. (I wrote this about 2015) If each car
radiator uses 1½ gallons of water, that’s over 1½ billion gallons
of water being held in automobile radiators. That doesn’t include
service vehicles like garbage trucks, farm tractors, city buses and
school buses, over-the-road trucks, or railroad locomotives.
Next,
calculate all the water in swimming pools, fountains, fire trucks…
and even ice cubes.
If
there were just 300 million people in the US, and five people in each
house. If each house has three ice cube trays, and it takes a quart
of water to fill three trays, that would be 15 million gallons of
water in peoples’ freezers.
The point is, there is a lot of water
that has been taken out of circulation, and much of it is now poison,
from an ecological point of view.
Dorp
and Sam were delivered to the city of Pocatello, Idaho. These bagels
have a lot more elbow room in Pocatello
than they did in New York
City.
The state of Idaho had a population of 1,568,000 in the 2010
census. Idaho has 83,600 square miles of land.
This means an
average of 19 people to each square mile of land.
New York City, in
2010, had about 8,337,000 people living in 303 square miles. This
means a square mile of New York City holds about 27,515 people.
27,515 versus 19 people per square mile.
The
bagels were sent to a young woman named Hannah. She met a man named
Kurt from Wyoming while both were going to college in New York. He
thought he wanted to be a western artist. While taking art classes,
he took a geology course to help him understand the rock formations
that he wanted to paint. But geology took ahold of him. He changed
his major to Geology but stayed in New York to be near Hannah. He
went camping in the Adirondacks every chance he had, even when it was
cold. Hannah however, thought going to Central Park for an afternoon
was a safari. Hannah studied Visual Arts at college and dedicated
her talents to designing vintage-style wallpapers. They married, and
he secured a job as a geologist in Idaho. The Internet, phones, and
shipping services allow her to develop her passion while he pursued
his. After all, wallpaper moves about easier than tectonic plates. (Kurt still likes to paint and has plenty of beautiful Idaho scenery to capture on canvas.)
Still, Hannah got homesick, and the bagels helped.
Hannah
was home when Sam and Dorp arrived. She took the box to the kitchen
counter and opened it, then pulled out the toaster. While the bagel
Sam and Dorp were in was toasting, Hannah took the cream cheese out
of the fridge. The heat of the toaster liberated Sam and Dorp, and
millions of other molecules of water from the bagel. Dorp cautioned
Sam.
“Now
Sam, when you’re back to being a boy, you need to be careful. Boys
don’t do well in toasters or garbage disposals, or falling out of
planes, understood?”
“Yes
sir. I have a joke. What do you call a seagull that lives on a bay?”
“I don’t know, since we’re about 600 miles from the
nearest ocean at Port Orford, Oregon, and Yreka, California, Sam.”
“A
bagel (bay-gull). And what’s this about?”
“It’s
my ever-so-subtle way of teaching you another tidbit of American
history.
Nearly due west of here is an area that has talked of
seceding from southern Oregon and Northern California,
and forming
the State of Jefferson.
“Wow.
Where would they put a 51st
star, and that was really a stretch to bring the State of Jefferson
into this conversation.”
“Human
history is interesting to dorps, we who have no free will and always
obey the rules of nature.
Look, Sam, we’ve moved to the basement, and are in the utility
room. What do you see?”
“I
see a bunch of pipes, tubes and what-not.”
"The
man of the house, Kurt, is a geologist. Part of his job is helping
businesses that install geothermal
or geoexchange
devices to businesses and homes here in Idaho.”
“What
is geothermal and geoexchange?”
“‘Geo’ means ‘earth’. ‘Thermal’ means ‘heat’. So true
geothermal means extracting heat from the earth to create steam to
power devices like electrical generators or cooking operations in
food factories. Geoexchange means using the temperature of the upper
crust of the earth for home comfort systems, in both heating and
cooling.”
“How
does that work, Mr. Dorp?”
“Think
about your Grandpa Ed’s root cellar. It’s basically a hole in the
ground for storing vegetables, with a thick layer of dirt overhead
and a door to get in. The temperature stays at 50°-55° year around.
That underground temperature is a source of heat in the winter, and
cooling in the summer, when properly managed.
"When you lived near
your grandparents, you would go into the root cellar on hot days to
cool off. On cold winter days,
you would go to the cellar to warm up
during a snowball fight with your cousins."
“Oh
yeah… I remember. It was musty, but nice to be in whether the
temperature was either real hot or real cold.”
“Exactly.
Now imagine tubes filled with water running through the cellar,
becoming 50°-55° water and then going back to your grandparents’
house. With the help of a heat pump to make the system more
efficient, that water could cool the house in the summer, or could
heat the house in the winter.”
“I
can imagine that. But why tubes filled with water?”
“Because
water absorbs heat about 30 times faster than air. So, water makes
the system more efficient. Now let’s take it a step further. Let’s
imagine that instead of having the pipes run through the cellar, we
dug deep holes in the yard like water wells and run pipes in them. We
can then put in a lot of pipes in a small yard.”
“It’s
funny how water coming out of the faucet outside seems too cold in
August, but warm enough to warm your hands in November. Geothermal is
a really cool, er, hot idea. How can something that is cool, be
really hot too?
“English
idioms. Sam.”
“So
ordinary houses can use this geostuff?”
“Yes.
While it’s always easier to build the system into a home as it’s
being built, older houses can certainly be retrofitted with
geoexchange units.”
Sam
wanted to talk about the big-power stuff. “Now what about real
geothermal stuff: how does it work?”
“Places like Iceland and New Zealand, there is enough heat near the earth’s surface to power steam boilers that power generators to make electricity. There are
small-scale geothermal sights like the ‘Old Faithful’ geyser in
Yellowstone Park and Hot springs in Georgia and near Thermopolis,
Wyoming.
“Volcanos
are cool, er, neat. I have an aunt that says volcanos are earth-zits,
because they always erupt at the worst time.
She isn’t real old, about 25, and
sometimes comes to dinner with a doozie of a zit and a real bad
mood.
She says they ruin her life.”
“Anytime
is a bad time for a volcano or a zit to be active, Sam. But I wish we could be in a zit so we could slam into a mirror at
40 miles-an-hour. I’ve done that a couple of times.”
"Wow;
my Mom would love you, NOT! She says that zit-juice is as gross as
snot.”
Dorp
and Sam were outside and free again, drifting on warm summer breezes.
They escaped the house via the range hood.
Sam enjoyed floating
around, once he learned that it didn’t hurt for a Dorp to fall. He just had to remember to be careful when he was a real boy
again. His Grandpa Ed has a shed in his back yard and Sam crawled up
on the roof one day a couple of years ago.
He tried to fly by jumping
off the roof and flapping his arms. This did not end well for Sam. It
was three days before he could walk straight. Grandma asked him why
he was limping, but he made excuses. He didn’t want to tell
them the real reason.
Grandpa just son ‘Son, the Law of Gravity
always wins, doesn’t it?’
That made Sam ask Dorp a question…
“Mr.
Dorp, why can we float now, and other times have no choice but to fall to the ground?”
“Again,
Sam, here’s the answer… We have been heated. Heat is thermal
energy. When thermal energy
enters us, we must go into motion. The heat energy gives us a motor. As
long as we contain heat, we can resist the effects of gravity, just
like a rocket. But eventually, the energy in us will actually outrun
us. That means the energy leaves us water molecules and then we are again heavier than the air around it and we will begin to
condense and drop…”
Sam
interrupted yet again, “Hey the word ‘condense’ has the word
‘dense’ in it!”
“Very
good, Sam. To condense means that we become morse dense, or compact
as we cool.
Now Sam, have you studied the Law
of inertia?”
Sam
blushed. “I remember hearing the term?”
“It
is Isaac Newton’s first of three laws
of motion. Do you remember
hearing about the man sitting under the tree with the falling apple?
The Law of Inertia says: An
object at rest will remain at rest unless acted on by an unbalanced
force. An object in motion continues in motion with the same speed
and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.
“Wonderful!
What does that mean, Mr. Dorp?”
“It
means the baseball on your back porch will stay where it sits until
someone picks it up and takes it somewhere else.
If your dad picks up
that baseball and throws it at the sun, it will hit the sun unless
something prevents stops it.”
“No
chance of that happening. Gravity is stronger than my dad’s
throwing arm. Wait! You know about my baseball !?"
Yes, and... gravity and friction are the two factors most likely to slow a moving
object.
That is what is meant by unbalanced
force.
Gravity is a force
greater that the force that launched the ball.
“How
can that be, if my dad could throw the ball in the first place?”
“Amazing
question, Sam. The throw was a one-time event. Gravity and friction
are continual forces. Your dad is strong enough to resist the effects
of gravity affecting the throw of the ball at ground level. But he
can’t travel with the ball and resist the effects of gravity at
100, 1,000, or 10,000 feet off the ground."
"Gravity operates at all
levels within the atmosphere, and so does friction.
It wears away at
your dad’s power like you wear away at a chocolate cake when your
mom is not looking.”
“Then
why have we been airborne for the last 4 days?”
“That’s
because the sunlight continually penetrates us and renews our energy.
We are continually being recharged by the solar energy during the day
to continue to resist gravity. We also receive heat energy from the
earth when it is dark.
Heat escaping the earth can actually energize
us from underneath. And breezes help keep us aloft at night.
“Can
anything deflect energy instead of absorbing it?”
“Sam,
thermal energy can pass through any material, though some materials
are more resistant to the effects of heat.
That heat resistance is
called the resistance factor, or R-factor.”
“I saw that written on bags of house insulation, when we worked on our
house.”
“Is
your dad handy around the house?”
“Grandpa
Ed says dad hammers like lightning.”
“How
so, Sam?”
“Grandpa
says he never hits the same spot twice.”
“Well,
Sam, insulation is made specifically to resist the travel of thermal
energy. There are many kinds of
insulation made for many applications. Insulation
in a house slows down the heat leaving the house. And it keeps outside
heat from entering during hot summers. The better insulated a house
is, the lower the heating and cooling bills, because the movement of
thermal energy is better controlled.”
“Oven
mitts are another form of insulation. The heat in the oven doesn’t
burn your mom’s hand when she touches the pan.”
“Hey!
When my mom opens a door to get a pizza, it is an oven door. But when
my dad opens a door to get a pizza,
it’s either a car door or the
front door of our house!”
“That
brings us to clothes as a form of insulation. One important use for
clothes is to keep people warm in the winter.
The cloth holds in a
person’s body heat so they don’t get hypothermia.”
“Mr.
Dorp, I’ve heard about people getting hypothermia when they fall
into water. What’s so bad about falling into 35° water when I can
play for hours in 35° air?
“Sam,
water absorbs heat 30 times faster than dry air. In 35° air, with
proper clothes and activity, your body can produce as much heat as it
loses to the cold air. But if you were to walk out on a still-frozen
lake and fall through the ice into 35° water, your clothes would
become wet, which means they would have no ‘R-value”, and your
body heat would be pulled out of you. Your body would not be able to
produce heat fast enough to keep your body temperature at its proper
level.
If you stayed in the water, your core body temperature would
fall until your body quit working.”
“Wow,
that’s scary. I thought temperature was temperature. I didn’t
know water made such a difference.
But then how do divers spend so
much time in cold water?”
Dorp
explained to Sam that scuba divers wear those odd-looking rubber
suits, called 'wetsuits'. They work in the water like a thick wool coat works in the
air. The diving suit keeps water off the diver’s skin and has
insulating value so that the diver’s body can produce enough body
heat for quite a while, depending on how cold the water is.
The wetsuit also
reflects body-generated heat back to the diver’s body. As a matter
of fact, diving suits can actually be dangerous. If you put a man in
a diver’s suit and sat him on a street corner in Albuquerque, New
Mexico in August, he would quickly get hyperthermia,
or be too hot.
This is because his body would create more heat than
his body can dispel though the diver’s suit. The human body only
has a about a 50° comfort range, according to the climate and how people are dressed. In other words, according to how we dress, we will either be chilling at 40° or sweating at 90°. That’s a
pretty narrow band of comfort, considering that humans live in areas
that range from -50° to 120°. That’s a 170° difference.
Humans
need certain conditions to keep their body heat in the ‘just right’
zone, like Goldilocks. This means keeping humidity levels just right.
30% -50% humidity is good for humans because it helps heat travel
through the air and helps heat escape the human body.
In some parts
of the country, air conditioners take water out of the air to make
the air more comfortable for people.
In arid areas, 'swamp coolers' actually put water into the air to help cool people. You see, there
is a ‘just right’ level of humidity necessary for humans.
Sam
thought this over, then asked: “If that’s true, then why does the
desert, which you said has low humidity, get so hot during the day?
“That’s
because desert heat is different from body heat. There are three
different types of heat;
conducted heat,
convection heat, and
radiated heat.”
"Conducted
heat is thermal energy that
moves from object to object, like from hot pizza pan to an
unprotected hand.
Convection
heat leaves its source,
travels through air space, rising when it is warm and falling as it
cools. It then warms or cools any object the air touches. This is how
the furnace in your home works.
The third type of heat is radiant
heat, which are
electromagnetic waves. They travel a distance from one object to
another without warming the air. This is how the sun warms the desert
during the day.
“So,
Mr. Dorp, when we ride the air, we are being moved by convection.
When water is warmed by the sun, as the water on Lake Michigan, it is
being warmed by radiation,
and when we evaporate out of cup of tea in
a restaurant, it is because of convective heat.”
“Very
good Sam.”
“But
what is it called when a rock in the desert is warmed by the sun, and
then a lizard is warmed by the rock; and how do electromagnetic waves
become radiant heat?”
“First,
the names change, as the form of transmission changes, like getting off the bus and getting in a car.
The
sun warms the rock by radiant
energy, which is when
electromagnetic energy waves hit the rock and is transformed into
thermal energy. This is what we call radiant
heat.
Then, the rock warms
the lizard by conductive
energy. The unit of energy is
the same but the way it travels is different."
"Sam, this is like little
Abby; whether she walks, runs or crawls, she is still moving,
correct?”
“I
guess so. How does one form of energy become another form of energy?
“
“The word 'energy' is an umbrella name for many kinds of power. Power strives to be in
motion, unless it is trapped, like the fire stored in a can of gas.
And that’s what gasoline is Sam, fire stored in a can.
“Is
there any kind of stored energy that isn’t dangerous?”
“Of
course; apples, oranges, hot chocolate, salami on rye bread. Bananas
are safe too, if you don’t step on the peel.”
“I’m
talking about real energy, Mr. Dorp.”
“Sunlight
produces both fruit and thermal energy to warm a lizard in the
desert.
Sunlight gives you food that gives you the energy to climb a
rope in gym class. Isn’t that real energy?”
“I
guess so."
Dorp
then explained that water is an important part of the energy process.
Water is used in photosynthesis in plants.
Water is important in
mechanical energy as it helps keep machines cool so they can do their
work without burning up.
Early electrical systems used a water-based
battery to store electricity for home use in rural areas of America.
Water is used in the manufacturing of rubber, which uses elastic
energy in things like a wind-up toy airplane.
Water is also a medium
for the transmission of sound energy. During wartime, ships on the
ocean use sonar technology,
which relies on water, to find enemy
submarines in the waters below.
Electricity in homes need moist soil
to provide proper safety grounding.”
“Water
and energy have a lot to do with each other, don’t they?”
“Yes,
they are co-existent on the planet Earth.”
“Which
is more important; water or energy?”
“Who
do your parents love most, Sam; you or Abby? Each of you are two very
different children and each of you have your own special place.
Likewise, energy and water each have their own special place in the
natural world. Energy moves things and makes inanimate objects like
dorps come to life and do things they can’t do by themselves.
Energy also propels living things to do what each of them does best, be it is a cheetah running or a mole digging,
or a child doing
math.”
“Math
is not what I do best. Climbing trees is what I do best,” Sam said.
“Perhaps
you’re right Sam. Nonetheless, energy is what gives you the power
to resist the laws of gravity and climb your favorite tree. Besides,
you’re better at math than any cheetah I’ve ever met.”
“That’s
because cheetahs can’t use a calculator."
But are you a cheata if you use a calculator during a math test?"
Whaaat...? Wow. Which is the best form of
energy?”
“The
correct answer is to use energy appropriate for the task.
Thermal
energy from a stove is what you need to heat a tea kettle, not
mechanical energy from a jack hammer.
Mechanical energy from a
jackhammer is what you need to tear out concrete, not light energy
from a flashlight.
Light energy from a flashlight is what you need to
find the fuse box in the dark after a storm, not magnetic energy.
Understand?”
“Yup,
er, yes.”
“Also, Sam, it is intelligent to use the most efficient and safe energy for the
project.
Use a tack hammer to drive a nail to hang a picture, not a sledgehammer.
Light a candle with a match, not a blowtorch. See?”
“Sure.
So then, what makes water as important as energy?”
“Hmmm.
Consider what the planet Earth would be like without water. It would
be like warm Mars. Life requires water, among other things. We are
the only planet with known life. Are we the only planet with water? I
don’t know; but water sustains life.
All living things are alive
partly because of water.”
“Additionally,
Sam, many medicines are metered with water.
Machines are cooled with
water.
Water provides entertainment.
Water provides food. Water
provides jobs.
Clean water keeps living things healthy.
Water is a
medium for both heating and cooling the environment.
Water creates electricity via hydroelectric plants.
Wow. Water in the form of clouds provides a
cooling shade.
As rain, it cools a parched land.
Most artisan
products are impossible without water, as is most art.“
Fighting a brushfire.
Photo: idahostatejournal.com