hydrogen and Iceland's geothermal energy production

[ghurd]

The Mauser is way off topic too.  You will laugh. It is kept in a vault. It is a rare item here.

But how did you learn English so well? School?

I don't know any Swedish at all.

G-

[skravlinge]

Everone her has English in school,9 of the 12 years they go there.

In my scool time it was not so, I heave learnt from meating  and work with people not speaking my language. We are not translating movies with sound (dubbing), you have to read some lines at the bottom of the screen, so you can't avoid hearing English.

The rifle is common here, used by the homeguard up to some years ago. I think you can get a  quite a few cheap. We have a strict weapon-control here so I cant buy, but I think you can buy from army surplus actions.

[E man]

I'm a day late and a dollar short on reading this interesting thread.

Well, in the early 1990's I had the privilege of being face to face with some of the U.S.'s best natural geothermal resources.  From our company's base in Santa Rosa, CA I was on the road about 200 days annually testing geothermal power facilities throughout the states of California, Nevada, and Hawaii. Most of the sites were in the middle of nowhere: China Lakes Naval Weapons Center near Ridgecrest CA, Salton Sea near the border or Mexico, and Geyserville CA.  I'd have to say that it was very interesting work.  The steam pressures at Geyserville CA ran about 150 psi (at the wellhead), Salton Sea was higher at about 500 psi, and by far the most interesting was Puna Geothermal Ventures near Pahoa, Hawaii...when we tested its startup operations the wellhead pressure (one single wellhead feeding the facility) was about 1700 psi and had recorded temperatures of about 750F.  

The facility at Pahoa was a "binary" power system that allowed brine and steam to be brought to the surface and heat a refrigerant (pentane, I think).  The pentane ran a turbine for power production in a seperate closed cycle system, and then the cooled brine from the resource (liquid fraction) was returned to the Earth through another injection well.  

Alternately, most of the geothermal facilities we tested were of the open cycle variety where the brine and steam are expanded through the turbine(s) and then vented directly to the atmosphere.  H2S was often a problem that had to be kept in check.  It is corrosive to the steel pipelines and is poisonous to humans if inhaled in high enough concentrations.  The H2S emitted from the power plants is diluted many fold by air entrainment so that it poses no danger to folks or animals.

I came away from the geothermal industry believing that although the possibilities are very interesting...it is still finite in terms of resource and development (just as the  petroleum industry).

Bottom line: I wholeheartedly agree with TomW...crude oil should be seen as a precious resource used primarily for plastics, medicines and chemicals.  Using it for home heating, automobiles and the like is merely extravagance multiplied by absurdity.    

Merry Christmas Folks,

E-man