On Friday, May 26th Paul Woskov, MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center, will join us to speak about Geothermal Drilling Technologies. Geothermal energy from Super-Hot Rock

Super Hot Rock (SHR) can be a virtually limitless base energy source with a power density comparable to fossil fuels. At depths ranging from 10 – 20 km about 80% of the world’s major population centers could access SHR. Pioneered at MIT and leveraging technology developed for nuclear fusion research, millimeter-wave (MMW) drilling represents a non-contact, direct energy penetration that replaces mechanical drilling with a full-bore energy-matter interaction. High-powered energy is efficiently guided downhole to result in dielectric heating > 2,000 oC, rapidly melting, pressurizing, and vaporizing the rock to create a borehole with a vitrified casing and transporting quenched vapors up-hole by a circulating purge gas. This process overcomes temperature/pressure limits of current drilling technology while improving drilling rates and lowering costs by an order of magnitude. In this presentation, we present the analytic basis of MMW drilling and why it is optimal to access deep SHR, provide experimental results, and plans at MIT, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), and Quaise Energy. Dr. Paul Woskov has been with MIT for 46 years, retiring from the Plasma Science and Fusion Center as a Senior Research Engineer after 41 years and currently continues part time as an active retiree. He has led and worked with national and international research teams in the areas of energy and environmental research. These areas have included work on major fusion energy experiments including ITER as an External Expert, on applied plasmas for nuclear waste remediation and pollution monitoring, and applications of millimeter-wave gyrotrons to geothermal energy, which included melting through granite and basalt for the first time using a powerful 5G frequency. Dr. Woskov has won 6 R&D 100 Awards as the inventor of new instrumentation and measurement methods for nuclear waste vitrification, atmospheric emissions, and thermal processes.