Mining Hydrothermal Vents For Renewable Electricity, Drinking Water + Valuable Minerals

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At least 264 million gallons of fresh water daily.

20 million gallons of hot fluid would flash to steam at the surface and that could be distilled back into fresh water. Further purification would be needed, but the natural heat from the process itself provides the most important part of the energy needed for the process. Fresh water is the new oil.

If even only 50% of the total volume could be recovered, that would still provide about 264 million gallons of fresh water daily. ‌

Catch 22

Unfortunately, desalination apparently requires the (more ecologically disruptive) open loop system, to work. (See first diagram) But, if that could be solved, there is another argument for mining the actual fluid (open loop); not just the heat (closed loop) system.

The materials in these geologically ancient vent fluids include iron, gold, silver, copper, zinc, cadmium, manganese, and sulfur. Halides, sulphates, chromates, molybdates and tungstates are also abundant.

When the fluid is trapped, the slurry left over after the heat is extracted can be loaded aboard ships for processing elsewhere, or processed on-site.

Cap and Trade would also help fund this completely new form of renewable energy extraction. Who better to carry it out than the oil industry. They already have the expertize with ocean drilling extraction.

Turns out there is also significant amounts of methane gas mixed into the fluid. Maybe there is a way to cap that for remediation-cum-fossil energy at the same time, as well as selling the renewable electricity, fresh water and minerals produced by the vents.

For the oil industry, with all these inducements, surely switching to mining renewable energy would be more cost effective than having to keep on paying media outlets and school districts and think-tanksfull of talking heads to keep enough people ignorant enough about climate change to slow the legislation needed to stop it; decade after decade.

Let’s hope.

Images from Flikr users aakova and thomitheos

Via Marshall Hydrothermal