Mining Hydrothermal Vents For Renewable Electricity, Drinking Water + Valuable Minerals
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Marshall Hydrothermal is pretty frank about the horrible ecological consequences: The company says that there is no way to sugar-coat the fact that these organisms will die so that we humans can live our much more exciting lives though electricity.
The company “plans” to relocate the local flora and fauna to another vent nearby. But can people work 7,000 feet down to carefully pull these limpet-like creatures off the sides of volcanic vents? I’m not quite sure how that would happen.
Or, perhaps a closed loop system would be safer? Marshall offers this alternative method:
Closed Loop Version
This looks a little less invasive: a closed loop system.
Rather than bringing up the hydrothermal fluid itself with bits and pieces of sea creatures as well, a simple heat exchange is effected within a closed loop: all the fluid is contained in the pipe and heated at the vent and circulated up for use to drive the turbines on the surface.
The cooled fluid is then sent back to be reheated by the vent again and again, but the hydrothermal fluid itself is never actually brought to the surface. More than just a huge renewable energy supply is at stake here.
We could also be making desalinated water from the ocean vents:
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