Toshifumi Sugama Honored for Contributions to Geothermal Industry

Toshifumi Sugama–a chemist in the Interdisciplinary Science Department at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory who designs, develops, and evaluates materials for geothermal wells–received the Outstanding Research Award from Geothermal Rising, a non-profit organization advocating for the advancement of geothermal energy around the world.

Underground Water Could be the Solution to Green Heating and Cooling

About 12% of the total global energy demand comes from heating and cooling homes and businesses. A new study suggests that using underground water to maintain comfortable temperatures could reduce consumption of natural gas and electricity in this sector by 40% in the U.S. The approach, called aquifer thermal energy storage (ATES), could also help prevent blackouts caused by high power demand during extreme weather events.

Exploring explosives for expanding geothermal energy

Why are scientists setting off small-scale explosions inside 1-foot cubes of plexiglass? They’re watching how fractures form and grow in a rock-like substance to see if explosives or propellants, similar to jet fuel, can connect geothermal wells in a predictable manner.Geothermal energy has a lot of promise as a renewable energy source that is not dependent on the sun shining or the wind blowing, but it has some challenges to wide adoption.

Geoscience technology company founded by MIT/WHOI Joint Program student awarded $3.8M from U.S. Department of Energy

Eden, a geoscience technology development company co-founded by Massachusetts Institute of Technology/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Joint Program student Paris Smalls, will receive $3.8 million in federal funding from the U.S. Department of Energy Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E).

Bubbling to the surface: WVU engineers develop new geothermal energy technology

As part of the American-Made Geothermal Manufacturing Prize competition, a challenge designed to spur innovation and address manufacturing challenges in geothermal environments, associate professor Terence Musho and Berry Chair Emeritus Nigel Clark in West Virginia University’s Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources, have developed a new airlift approach to optimize current geothermal pump technologies.

Cornell University to Extract Energy from Manure to Meet Peak Heating Demands

Cornell University is developing a system to extract energy from cattle manure to meet the campus’s peak demands for heat in the winter months. In the Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy, scientists involved with the project give a detailed analysis of the issues required to make this work, including scientific, economic, and energy policy considerations.

Geothermal Brines Could Propel California’s Green Economy

Deep beneath the surface of the Salton Sea, a shallow lake in California’s Imperial County, sits an immense reserve of critical metals that, if unlocked, could power the state’s green economy for years to come. These naturally occurring metals are dissolved in geothermal brine, a byproduct of geothermal energy production. Now the race is on to develop technology to efficiently extract one of the most valuable metals from the brine produced by the geothermal plants near the Salton Sea: lithium.