Iceland Deep Drilling Project
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The Iceland Deep Drilling Project (IDDP) is a geothermal project established in 2000 by a consortium of the National Energy Authority of Iceland (Orkustofnun/OS) and four of Iceland's leading energy companies: Hitaveita Sudurnesja (HS),
Landsvirkjun Landsvirkjun, () the National Power Company of Iceland, is Iceland's largest electricity generator. Landsvirkjun operates 18 power plants in Iceland concentrated on five main areas of operation. History Landsvirkjun was founded on 1 July 1965 b ...
,
Orkuveita Reykjavíkur Orkuveita Reykjavíkur (English: Reykjavík Energy) is an Icelandic energy and Public utility, utility company that provides electricity, geothermal energy, geothermal hot water through district heating and cold water for consumption and fire figh ...
and Mannvit Engineering. The consortium is referred to as "Deep Vision". The aim is to improve the economics of
geothermal energy Geothermal energy is the thermal energy in the Earth's crust which originates from the formation of the planet and from radioactive decay of materials in currently uncertain but possibly roughly equal proportions. The high temperature and pres ...
production. Its strategy is to look at the usefulness of supercritical hydrothermal fluids as an economic energy source. This necessitates drilling to depths of greater than in order to tap the temperatures of more than . The drilling is at a rifted plate margin on the
mid-oceanic ridge A mid-ocean ridge (MOR) is a seafloor mountain system formed by plate tectonics. It typically has a depth of about and rises about above the deepest portion of an ocean basin. This feature is where seafloor spreading takes place along a diverge ...
. Producing steam from a well in a reservoir hotter than —at a proposed rate of around should be sufficient to generate around 45  MW. If this is correct, then the project could be a major step towards developing high-temperature geothermal resources. "Deep Vision" recognized at its inception that much research would be needed regarding the poorly understood supercritical environment and as such sought to promote inclusion of the wider scientific community. Funding has come from the members of the consortium, the
International Continental Scientific Drilling Program The International Continental Scientific Drilling Program is a multinational program to further and fund geosciences in the field of Continental Scientific Drilling. Scientific drilling is a critical tool in understanding of Earth processes and s ...
and the US
National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National I ...
. This project has also been used for purposes such as university research. Researchers from
UC Davis The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a public land-grant research university near Davis, California. Named a Public Ivy, it is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The institut ...
,
UC Riverside The University of California, Riverside (UCR or UC Riverside) is a public land-grant research university in Riverside, California. It is one of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The main campus sits on in a suburban distr ...
,
Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...
, and the
University of Oregon The University of Oregon (UO, U of O or Oregon) is a public research university in Eugene, Oregon. Founded in 1876, the institution is well known for its strong ties to the sports apparel and marketing firm Nike, Inc, and its co-founder, billion ...
have taken the opportunity to collaborate with each other and the IDDP. They have aimed their investigation to gain information about extracting energy from hot rocks on land. To do this, they have been gathering important information from the
borehole A borehole is a narrow shaft bored in the ground, either vertically or horizontally. A borehole may be constructed for many different purposes, including the extraction of water ( drilled water well and tube well), other liquids (such as petro ...
they sunk where seawater circulates through deep, hot rock. This should give important new clues about
black smokers A hydrothermal vent is a fissure on the seabed from which geothermally heated water discharges. They are commonly found near volcanically active places, areas where tectonic plates are moving apart at mid-ocean ridges, ocean basins, and hotspot ...
, hydrothermal vents that spew minerals and
superheated water Superheated water is liquid water under pressure at temperatures between the usual boiling point, and the critical temperature, . It is also known as "subcritical water" or "pressurized hot water". Superheated water is stable because of overpres ...
deep below the ocean. These support unique
microorganism A microorganism, or microbe,, ''mikros'', "small") and ''organism'' from the el, ὀργανισμός, ''organismós'', "organism"). It is usually written as a single word but is sometimes hyphenated (''micro-organism''), especially in olde ...
communities living within them.


First Well, IDDP-1

The 49th Volume of the journal ''Geothermics'', released in January 2014, is entirely dedicated to the first well of the IDDP. The borehole of this well was unintentionally drilled into a
magma reservoir A magma chamber is a large pool of liquid rock beneath the surface of the Earth. The molten rock, or magma, in such a chamber is less dense than the surrounding country rock, which produces buoyant forces on the magma that tend to drive it upw ...
in 2009. The hole was initially planned to drill down to hot rock below , but drilling was ceased when the drill struck magma at only deep. This same occurrence has only been recorded once, in a Hawaiian geothermal well in 2007, but in that instance, it resulted in the sealing and abandonment of the hole. In IDDP-1 the decision was made to continue the experimental well, and upon inserting cold water into the well, which was over . The resultant well was the first operational Magma- EGS, and was at the time the most powerful geothermal well ever drilled. While not producing electricity on the grid, it was calculated that the output of the well would have been sufficient to produce 36 MW of electricity. The well was eventually shut down after a valve failure occurred while attempting to connect the output to a central generator.


Second Well (continuation of an old borehole), IDDP-2

Five years before IDDP-1 was made, a borehole was drilled at
Reykjanesvirkjun The Reykjanes Power Station (known as ''Reykjanesvirkjun'' ) is a geothermal power station located in Reykjanes at the southwestern tip of Iceland. As of 2012, the power plant generates 100MWe from two 50MWe turbines, using steam and brine from ...
. It was named RN-15 or REY H015 (Reykjanes-15) and is just one of many geothermal boreholes drilled in the
Reykjanes peninsula Southern Peninsula ( is, Suðurnes ) is an administrative unit and part of Reykjanesskagi (pronounced ), or Reykjanes Peninsula, a region in southwest Iceland. It was named after Reykjanes, the southwestern tip of Reykjanesskagi. The region ha ...
since 1956. It reached a maximum depth of 2.5 km (1.55 mi). It was always known that RN-15 could be deepened, after a good result of the drilling. About 10 years later, IDDP decided to continue drilling under the project name IDDP-2. The plan was to reach a maximum depth of 5 km (3.11 mi) before the end of 2016, making it by far the deepest borehole in Iceland. Scientists were hoping to reach a temperature of , which would be the hottest blast of any hole in the world, breaking the former record of the IDDP-1 Krafla borehole. Drilling began on August 11, 2016, and was completed 167 days later on January 25, 2017. The final depth was , with a temperature of and fluid pressure of . Core samples were taken, showing rocks at the bottom that appeared to be permeable, and fluids in supercritical conditions were successfully reached, accomplishing all of the main objectives of the drilling operation.


See also

*
Geothermal power in Iceland Geothermal power in Iceland refers to the use of geothermal energy in Iceland for electricity generation. Iceland’s uniquely active geology has led to natural conditions especially suitable for harnessing geothermal energy. Icelanders have long ...
*
Renewable energy in Iceland Iceland is a world leader in renewable energy. 100% of Iceland's electricity grid is produced from renewable resources. In terms of total energy supply, 85% of the total primary energy supply in Iceland is derived from domestically produced renew ...
*
Quaise Quaise, Inc was founded in 2018 to develop a millimeter-wave drilling system for converting existing power stations to use superdeep geothermal energy. The system repurposes existing gyrotron technology to drill 20 kilometers beneath the surface, ...


References

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Bibliography

* Fridleifsson, G.O., and Albertsson, A., 2000. Deep geothermal drilling at Reykjanes Ridge: opportunity for an international collaboration. In Proceedings of the World Geothermal Congress 2000, Japan: Reykjavik, Iceland (International Geothermal Association, Inc.), 3701–3706. * Fell, A., & Zierenberg, R. (7 November 2007). Deep Drilling for "Black Smoker" Clues : UC Davis News & Information. http://news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.lasso?id=8420


External links


Iceland Deep Drilling Project

Volume 49 of the Journal Geothermics
Geothermal energy in Iceland