An IIT-Bombay-led team studying the famous geysers of the Western Ghats in Maharashtra has flagged their vast potential as a source of green energy as well as jobs.
The team, comprising Trupti Chandrashekhar of the department of earth sciences at IIT-Bombay, and collaborators from IIT-Hyderabad, Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Petroleum Technology, Amethi, and the University of Florence, Italy, had set out to study a 350-km stretch of Maharashtra’s over 720-km coastline.
The region, called the west coast geothermal province (WCGP), is one of India’s seven geothermal areas. It has more than 60 hot water springs across 18 locations, where water steeped in minerals bursts forth at temperatures between 40 and 72 degrees Celsius.
“The mid- and long-term development plan [for the region] could be centred on the use of geothermal energy for generating cheap, clean and base power generation systems, beginning with the drilling of 10-to-15-metre-deep exploration pits along the identified locations,” said Chandrashekhar.
Trupti Chandrasekhar et al. GRC Transactions, Vol. 40, 2016
