Mexico:

Helping Mexico Go Green (Lab Manager)

Research includes how CO2 promises to harvest geothermal energy more efficiently than water, the conventional geothermal heat extraction medium.

A graphic generated by numerical simulation shows pressure distribution inside a deep saline aquifer geothermal reservoir in Mexico that has been injected for 20 years with CO2. (Courtesy Lehigh University)

Lehigh University’s Energy Research Center in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, USA, is leading an effort to recycle the carbon dioxide produced by fossil fuel power plants while simultaneously helping Mexico increase its use of renewable energy sources and reduce national CO2 emissions.

The ERC has signed a contract with the University of Michoacan San Nicolas de Hidalgo to study and test methods of using CO2 to enhance the extraction of geothermal energy from underground aquifers and rock formations. The three-year project is receiving $1.67 million in total funding from Mexico’s National Council for Science and Technology (CONACYT).

Because CO2 is a greenhouse gas, scientists are trying to develop ways of sequestering it, or storing it permanently, in underground mines and rock formations and at the bottom of the ocean. Combining sequestration and the reuse of CO2 would be a less expensive way of preventing it from entering the atmosphere after it is emitted from coal- or oil-fired power plants.

In addition, says Romero, the physical properties of CO2 promise to enable it to harvest geothermal energy more efficiently than water, the conventional geothermal heat extraction medium.

Read More......