Magma Power

Way too dangerous. Magma is molten rock and will take no prisoners.

If you refer to Geyser Steam Powerplant as harnessing magma power, you have several in Iceland.

Yes, it's called a Geothermal Powerplant, not only in Iceland.

Geothermal is a fairly standard way of harnessing the earth's natural heat (currently about 7GW of generation or more world wide). Not surprisingly, magma power has been considered.

http://www.magma-power.com/pages/magma_power_plant.html

I don't think there is a great deal of economically obtainable energy to be extracted out of surface lava flows.

I am not aware of any disaster movies based on this principle but I do seem to recall a Doctor Who episode where it all went horribly wrong.

Yeah Jack, there is an old disaster movie about this exact subject. I think it was called 'When the world split in two' and it was about drilling down to the magma and tapping the energy but the mantle was to hard for the drill and they decided to blast through with an nuclear weapon. This caused the earth to crack and split into two. All of which I'm sure is based on sound scientific research and fact. So if Hollywood thinks it implausible then the rest of us should give up because we'll all be doomed.

After they gave us "The Core" (the worst movie physics ever) I don't think anything is impossible. Who knew you could just braze a contact to each side of your cockpit and connect it up to your vehicle electrical system for that much needed power boost. Makes me wonder why they needed the nuclear reactor in the first place.

If by "The Core" you meant this ridiculous flic about this craft going into the earth's core, I was rolling on the floor laughing my ass off. It busted several stitches on my belly, left for years not being able to heal, from another such movie, "Anaconda".

Any other suggestion to rip my belly open?

Here is a good link to what went wrong in that movie (which I must admit was a good movie to watch, at least from an entertainment point of view) - http://www.intuitor.com/moviephysics/core.html

Ok, the opening space battle scene of the latest Star Wars movie (revenge of the Sith I believe) where Cruisers duke it out at point blank range with side-mounted projectile launchers. Arrgh me hearties, here be space pirates.

If you look carefully at the last scene where Darth Vader first makes an appearance, there is one specific shot (quite short) which they forgot to digitally alter (at least in the version I watched on the big screen). Specifically the big red and green rocker switches on his front chest plate. That's right, the green one has a big "O" on it and the red one has a big "I". Perhaps Luke should have used the red off switch instead of his light saber.

Other choices are any latest Steven Siegel or Jean Claude Van dam movie (seriously the latest Jean Claude Van dam movie is awful. Who would have thought the American marines used Russian Hind gunships).

"...Who would have thought the American marines used Russian Hind gunships..."

What of all these WW2 movies from the seventies, where Nazis and Russians used full American military gear, only with painted Swastika and Soviet stars?

It was priceless for me, even better than the "alien ship" taking-off at the end of "Rocky Horror Picture Show"...

Or the Nazi car falling from several miles high, in the "Blues Brothers"...

Oh, that reminds me of the movie independence day. Who would have thought that the alien ships operating system was directly compatible with the C programming language. They should have just uploaded Windows 200 onto it, then they wouldn't have needed the nuke <zzzzt...unknown device detected "Life support". Disabling>.

Right to the point. We call it in Hebrew "Kharta" - Major bullshit of the sort, that even the author doesn't care if it's bull, let alone others. As if "who cares if it's real or not?, no one of our viewers will ever be able to tell the difference".

There actually is a function in movie-making called "Continuity" to care just for this: inconsistent details in the story or photography, to expose "holes" in the movie or it's internal logic.

Their "nagging" suggestions not always taken into account, since fixing these holes may increase the expected or budgeted overhead. Hence "They wouldn't be able to tell the difference"

I should have been more specific and noted "surface lava flows". Deep earth geothermal and geothermal steam power are nothing new (and Booooooring).

Someone had the balls to figure out how to boil water with radioactive rods...why not red hot flows of rock? I know it would be no small feat, but I still say doable. The question is, worth the effort?

Would you rise up to meet the challenge?

There is no pratical way because the surface lava is constantly moving and also cooling as it goes. What happens if you get a catastrophic erruption that wipes out your heat recovery plant? Along with all those who may work there? What will be your insurance claim?

I know that the technology is viable for geothermal energy recovery and while the costs may be high, I dont believe they are that far afield from the costs to generate power from solar or wind power. They also provide a source of power that we know a lot more about, it is closer to home and available worldwide.

Surface lava energy recovery is indeed fraught with difficulties and not likely worth the effort.

Doable, yes; practical, no. There is an anecdote about (iirc) Oppenheim taking a mirror to a nuclear test, and focusing the reflection to light a cigarette. So, again, doable, yes; practical, no. BTW, guess who uses geothermal in his own personal residence?

(no fair peeking!)

(no fair peeking!)

(no fair peeking!)

OK, George W. Bush, President of the United States of America!

(take that, Al Gore!)

You mean some talk of doing something and some do it!!!

Yes, here in Chile the record deepness in drilling is 9400 meters. It is not necessary to drill close to a volcano, and in fact this is prohibited. In some places the temperature rises 5º per 100 meters, but actually the temperature rise is a complex curve in function of deepness. This competition is secret so I have poor information. To the moment I have been unable to participate in the projects because it is necessary to make an enormous capital deposit, but I guess that the idea is to drill in high diameter, say 1 meter, and divide the tube into 2 thermally isolated divisions all along and connected only at the bottom, one division to inject the water already condensed by the turbine, and the other to recover the high temperature vapor for the turbine. I have no idea of the amount of electrical energy that could be extracted from each perforation.

Jaime Soto Figueroa

http://www.matharts.cl/

The available temp. is not the whole story in obtaining geothermal power.

The practical limit on the rate at which the power can be retrieved is a function
of the heat conductivity of the rock, (generally lousey), and the area you can
expose to it.

Even with, (as suggested above), a mobile plant, you lose the investment in the
buried pipe collectors. The Icelanders have become adept at this kind of calculation.

Damn, I just love nay-sayers! It's shear joy to imagine the possibilities they avoid.

Let's say you have the available, reasonably predictable volcano. Now in between big flows, prepare the area by sculpting it to not only level it to install the heat adsorbing pipes, but plan for maneuvering the Magma flows to build up in areas which would allow future utilization for power, human habitation or agriculture!

With the temperatures available, the plant could be located far enough away to be safely operated, especially with the latest insulating techniques.

Can we say extraterrestrial here without getting torched? Imagine going to somewhere that heat from the planet or moon could augment power systems which have to be transported by rocket. It could significantly reduce extra shipments from Earth!

Bill H.

"...I've been reading a lot of discussion on...piezo electric power..."

1. What is "piezo electric power" in the context given by you, here?

2. What for instance, did you read about "piezo electric power", concerning energy extraction?

Piezo electricity is the phenomenon which allows you to use piezo compounds, to transduce directional lattice pressure with polar static/dynamic electricity, such as in "piezo tweeters", or piezo "bang-spark" lighters.

How would you suggest we can use this to enable us, extract some usable energy from earth's environment?

Mind you, I'm not saying "impossible": Car bumps was suggested to produce such electricity to be stored, but was not proven to extract (electrical) more than invested (Chemical).

Waves can move a piezogenerator. as far as I know some tests have been done but years ago when piezogenerators were too expensive

Hi,

piezos would need an impedance transformer (micrometer to meter!) as these elements have super high stiffness and thus super small deformations coupled with high forces but these only compressive.

A turbine would be much better.

RHABE

Hi,

magma power would be feasible if you drill really near or into the magma chamber of a volcano.

This has been done for the first time some years ago in Japan reaching a temperature of 550°C.

Only there will be sufficient heat capacity for a lonfg term and efficient steam power plant.

The problems:

leaching of high temperature solid or liquid material will generate a highly corrosive solution or steam. So an additional heat exchanger will be necessary as in the today existing geothermal power plants.

RHABE

Hello,

I have had an idea but then I watched Iron Man well then it kinda made me realise that it wouldn't work, but anyway tell me wat you think!

Taking a little orb thing that vibrates at high speed to keep the magma(Lava) Hot well taking little anergy to power the vibrations (The meterial would need to be able to hold the magma for a long time as in 25 years or so...) Well you know that you can take heat and transform it into electricity then take the heat waves and turn it into electricity and vola. You wouldn't need a long lasting battery for cars,boats,motor bikes ect... knowing scientist have been trying to have enough power to power a car,boat,motor bikes ect for a long time for like a 10-48 hours.

___________________

If you think it's posible try it

you wouldn't have to drill into the magma itself steam is created at 212 so you could drill to about 1000 degrees then you use insulated piping to send the water into the heat source then return it to a boiler (under pressure so it wont turn to steam until it enters the boiler) then the steam goes back into the system after it turns the turbine very efficient,but oil companies wont profit from it or there investers. that's why you probably wont find much info.