Scientists urge the use of geothermal energy
Tony Carnie: SA should consider including renewable option in mix despite potential damage to environment, study reads
A hidden, almost limitless supply of energy could be swirling around, directly beneath our feet. Local geologist Taufeeq Dhansay and a group of five fellow scientists from the Council of Geoscience and Nelson Mandela University believe that the government is overlooking significant volumes of buried Earth heat, which could be tapped to generate renewable energy. Writing in the latest volume of the South African Journal of Science, Dhansay notes that SA does not have active volcanoes or evidence of recent volcanic activity. Yet he believes a recent heat-mapping study suggests there is still enough heat and warmth beneath the land that could be used to generate steam and electricity, making use of recent technological advances in the field of low-enthalpy geothermal energy harvesting. In this harvesting, geothermal fluids are pumped deep underground at high pressure to absorb the Earth’s buried heat and returned to a heat-exchange mechanism on the surface to generate steam and electri...
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