On this page, I aim to document my research into areas of interest of mine.

Since a young age, my dad has educated me about the climate, informing me about global warming and warning me of the consequences of inaction. Over the last few years, I have become much more aware of the changing climate, and have started to engage with climate policy and innovations. This recently culminated in me reading "Renewable Energy - without the Hot Air"  - a book that has totally changed my perspective on the world.

This book has really made me aware of the need for new renewable technologies, alongside the continued development of current tech such as solar and wind. A number of renewable energy technologies have been of particular interest to me, namely Geothermal, and Fusion. These two technologies, it seems to me, both have a great potential for future development, and could both provide much needed green energy, to compliment the transition to electrified transport; for this reason, I wanted to do some further research into the development of these two means of energy production.

MacKay brought to my attention a number of issues surrounding geothermal energy - namely the fact that geothermal can only be harnessed at certain active locations in the world such as Iceland. Even here, the rate of energy production cannot surpass a certain amount, as it is limited by the rate at which thermal energy can be drawn out of rock into water. Currently, due to its very real limitations, geothermal is used only very sparingly around the world, accounting for only 0.34% of total energy production (Luis, 2024). MacKay does explain in his book that the power generated by a geothermal station is limited by the depth of the borehole, and it seems that little development has been made in this regard. Drilling deep boreholes is a very difficult task due to the immense heat experienced at depth. With holes deep enough however, geothermal could theoretically be harvested more readily around the world.

I proceeded to watch a video from real engineering, outlining a new type of boring technology which aimed to reduce the tremendous fees associated with the use of conventional drill heads. The video highlights the amount of geothermal energy found bellow the surface of the earth, as a result of radioactive decay and tectonic movement, explaining that if we were to harness only 1% of this energy, we would be able to cleanly power mankind for countless years. The video discusses a business which is developing a new type of technology in order to enable faster drilling to greater depths. This business is Quaise Energy. 

When drilling bore holes to "ultra deep depths", the drill bits have to be changed regularly, which takes a large amount of time, as they must be returned to the surface to be replaced. For Quasie Energy's goal of boring to 20 thousand meters or more, this is not an option, as the time taken - and therefore cost - to return and replace the drills gets exponentially larger as the depth increases. Instead, Quasie Energy uses conventional drill bits to begin their bore holes - drilling to depths of up to 5 thousand meters - before switching to a high powered gyrotron to melt rock, by emitting high intensity electromagnetic waves. These waves are emitted in the form of a laser, which must then be guided by wave guides down the bore hole. The benefit of this is that the wave guides do not themselves need to be in contact with the rock that they are mining, preventing the deterioration of the drill bit, allowing for the boring of holes to much greater depths.

With this technology having been tested only in the laboratory, there have been theorised problems which could lead to difficulty in real world application. For example, it is predicted that water may seep into the bore hole, from the surrounding rock. This water would drastically reduce the effect of the electromagnetic waves, increasing the amount of energy needed to melt the rock. Further, the energy required for the operation of the gyrotron alone is great, with the device operating at 85 kilovolts to power its 1 megawatt millimetre wave laser. The large generator needed to power such a beam is often not as easy to implement at a construction site, which may cause practical issues.

Regardless of these issues, Quaise Energy are moving forwards with real world tests this year, in order to find and eliminate real world issues. The plan for the company is to make bore hole drilling more affordable, therefore increasing the feasibility of geothermal power generation across the world. They are hoping to use their technology to rapidly transform fossil fuel infrastructure across the world, to make use of global deep geothermal energy, in order to help guide the world towards a future of more renewable energy practice. 

The video went on to explain - through the use of animation - the different engine cycles of normal combustion engines, in which the fuel and oxidiser and sprayed from liquid form into a combustion chamber before being ignited and expelled through a throat before being ejected through de Laval nozzle  shape, accelerating the exhaust gasses to speeds greater than the speed of sound. The use of liquid propellants greatly increases the efficiency of these engines over conventional cold gas thrusters as liquid fuel is much more energy dense. The problem with these engines arise when it comes to getting the pressure needed to inject fuel into the combustion chamber. For this purpose, massive turbines are required with ludicrous amounts of power. These turbines can now - with the advent of new battery technology - be powered electrically, however this is incredibly heavy and not scalable - electric turbines have only been successfully used on very small scale rockets. When larger engines and more thrust are required, the turbines must be powered by the propellant itself, as this is much more energy dense than any electrical store of energy. The way these turbines are run correspond to the type of cycle which the engine runs; fuel rich means that mostly fuel with a little bit of oxidiser spin the turbine and oxidiser means the opposite. There is a huge variation in the engineering of engines with these technologies with many attempts to There are many draw backs and technical difficulties of both methods, but these types of combustion cycles are common and can produce a large amount of thrust, having been used on the majority of rocket engines across the years. In order to start the turbines, a small amount of cold gas must be used. 

There are a multitude of new engine cycle technologies being developed at current; some of these cycles where thought to always be impossible - for example the Raptor engine used on the starship is the only rocket engine to use full fuel flow staged combustion which means that all of the propellant flows through the turbines - in this instance the turbines work as pre burners - before entering the combustion chamber as hot gas. These gas reactions are then much more energetic and combust much more efficiently than liquid combustions. This technology has only recently been developed, due to the extreme cost associated, however this method of combustion is incredibly efficient, with Elon having been quoted as stating that the engine already runs at a staggering 98% of possible efficiency.