Geothermal Energy Technology
This type of energy uses heat from inside the Earth
What is geothermal energy?
Geothermal plants produce very little of this compared to coal or oil plants
What are greenhouse gases?
The tectonic activity caused by the convergent plate boundaries around the “Ring of Fire” primarily affects which coast of the United States?
What is the West Coast?
This type of heat pump takes heat from the outside air and brings it into a building
What is an air-source heat pump?
The energy associated with the tides comes ultimately from the motions of what?
What is the Moon and the Earth?
This machine is spun by steam to generate electricity in a geothermal plant
What is a turbine?
This gas can sometimes be released from geothermal plants, smells like rotten eggs
What is hydrogen sulfide
What is the majority of geothermal energy used worldwide for?
What is Bathing and Swimming
A heat pump that extracts heat from the ground uses this type of energy
What is geothermal (ground source) energy?
The Moon revolves around Earth every ____ days
What is 27.3 days?
This type of plant uses high-temperature water
What is a flash steam plant?
Many geothermal energy sites are located in these protected locations, which can raise env concerns
What are national parks/scenic areas?
California produces what percentage of the world's geothermal electricity ?
What is 14%
A heat pump can also cool a home by reversing this process, acting like this common appliance
What is an air conditioner?
The world’s greatest tidal range between low tide and high tide occurs where?
What is the Bay of Fundy, Canada?
This type of plant is a closed-loop geothermal plant
What is a binary cycle plant?
Drilling for geothermal energy can sometimes cause these small ground movements.
What are earthquakes?
A heat pump delivers 42,000 joules of heat to a warm the Prancing Pony Inn, while using 5,000 joules of electrical energy.
What is the coefficient of performance (COP) of the heat pump?
What is COP = 8.4
What does COP stand for
What is the coefficient of performance?
Tidal plants generate power only on the incoming and outgoing tides, this makes their capacity factor (the ratio of average power to peak power) very low, on average, less than ___ percent
What is 25%?
The gradual increase in temperature with depth is called this
What is a geothermal gradient?
Geothermal plants require careful water management to prevent this type of contamination
What is groundwater contamination?
Dr. Marano is thinking about getting a geothermal heat pump. His home gas furnace operates at 72% efficiency (i.e. converts 72% of its fuel energy into useful heat). He is thinking of buying a heat pump with a COP of 3.4. He gets his electricity from a thermal power plant whose efficiency averages 50%.
which system is the most efficient for creation of useful heat
What is the geothermal heat pump system? (Bonus: GHP system requires 58% less fuel)
What is the equation for COP
What is COP = heat delivered/electrical energy required?
The total wave power delivered to all the world’s coasts is some 3 TW (Terrawatts), and we are able to harness only a minuscule portion of that. Estimates of the power that would be economically extractable with current wave-energy-conversion technologies (as of 2023) fall between ______ TW (Terrawatts)
What is between 0.01 and 0.1 TW?