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What would it take to harness the water? Is it a viable source of water if a people doesn't have access to rain/other bodies of water?

by voat 4y ago

fwlr 4y ago
We drilled down to 12km of true vertical depth in 1989 (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kola_Superdeep_Borehole https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kola_Superdeep_Borehole) as a scientific project, and since then there’s been a handful of commercial oil drilling projects that have hit similar lengths (but crucially not true vertical depth, they go shallower and then go sideways), and some oil extraction projects do drill deep holes looking for oil and then don’t actually extract it because there’s other easier targets. The best indicator for whether we can harness this water might be something like “what is the deepest true vertical depth that we actually operate commercial-scale extraction projects at”. A quick scan didn’t provide any easy answers, but https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/04/17/the-worlds-deepest-oil-well-how-bad-science-spreads-on-the-internet/ https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/04/17/the-worlds-deepest-oi... sounds knowledgeable (at least, aware of TVD vs length) and claims actual extraction at true vertical depths of 20k to 28k feet in the Gulf. So commercial extraction tops out at ~9km and the limits of scientific exploration top out at ~12km. Ringwoodite is found 50x deeper than that, at 450km. Safe to say it’s well outside our reach. The other issue is that oil is extremely amenable to extraction: it’s a big high pressure balloon of liquid deep under the earth, we essentially just poke a hole in it and it pumps itself to the surface. Ringwoodite is a solid material, we would have to transport it up that 450km ourselves, and once we have it’s still only a few percent water which we would have to liberate from the material and then break out of its hydroxide form. Essentially the picture I am drawing here is that a people could sooner mine comets in space than ringwoodite from underground.
- defrost 4y ago
  Watts Up With That? > sounds knowledgeable (at least, aware of TVD vs length) is a stunningly accurate description overall of the blog of Anthony Watts. It's a good enough source of things that deserve to be looked up in detail elsewhere, a place where a skeleton of facts is generally sound but the conclusions and interpretations are shakily balanced on cherry picked exceptions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watts_Up_With_That%3F https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watts_Up_With_That%3F
dogma1138 4y ago
Even if we could, any event catastrophic enough to require us to do so would likely kill us all off way before we can figure out yet alone practically do so. As long as there is an atmosphere you are probably better off at moisture farming than trying to extract oxygen and hydrogen out of minerals to make water. This is what would happen if the sun disappeared tomorrow style of events. Yes we have an active core and the planet would likely be warm enough at its depths that we can survive of that heat but we will all be deader than dead well before we will be able to do that.

What would it take to harness the water? Is it a viable source of water if a people doesn't have access to rain/other bodies of water?

by voat 4y ago

What would it take to harness the water? Is it a viable source of water if a people doesn't have access to rain/other bodies of water?

fwlr 4y ago

We drilled down to 12km of true vertical depth in 1989 (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kola_Superdeep_Borehole https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kola_Superdeep_Borehole) as a scientific project, and since then there’s been a handful of commercial oil drilling projects that have hit similar lengths (but crucially not true vertical depth, they go shallower and then go sideways), and some oil extraction projects do drill deep holes looking for oil and then don’t actually extract it because there’s other easier targets. The best indicator for whether we can harness this water might be something like “what is the deepest true vertical depth that we actually operate commercial-scale extraction projects at”. A quick scan didn’t provide any easy answers, but https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/04/17/the-worlds-deepest-oil-well-how-bad-science-spreads-on-the-internet/ https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/04/17/the-worlds-deepest-oi... sounds knowledgeable (at least, aware of TVD vs length) and claims actual extraction at true vertical depths of 20k to 28k feet in the Gulf. So commercial extraction tops out at ~9km and the limits of scientific exploration top out at ~12km. Ringwoodite is found 50x deeper than that, at 450km. Safe to say it’s well outside our reach. The other issue is that oil is extremely amenable to extraction: it’s a big high pressure balloon of liquid deep under the earth, we essentially just poke a hole in it and it pumps itself to the surface. Ringwoodite is a solid material, we would have to transport it up that 450km ourselves, and once we have it’s still only a few percent water which we would have to liberate from the material and then break out of its hydroxide form. Essentially the picture I am drawing here is that a people could sooner mine comets in space than ringwoodite from underground.

defrost 4y ago
Watts Up With That? > sounds knowledgeable (at least, aware of TVD vs length) is a stunningly accurate description overall of the blog of Anthony Watts. It's a good enough source of things that deserve to be looked up in detail elsewhere, a place where a skeleton of facts is generally sound but the conclusions and interpretations are shakily balanced on cherry picked exceptions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watts_Up_With_That%3F https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watts_Up_With_That%3F

dogma1138 4y ago

Even if we could, any event catastrophic enough to require us to do so would likely kill us all off way before we can figure out yet alone practically do so. As long as there is an atmosphere you are probably better off at moisture farming than trying to extract oxygen and hydrogen out of minerals to make water. This is what would happen if the sun disappeared tomorrow style of events. Yes we have an active core and the planet would likely be warm enough at its depths that we can survive of that heat but we will all be deader than dead well before we will be able to do that.