Rosemanowes Quarry
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Rosemanowes Quarry, near
Penryn, Cornwall Penryn (; kw, Pennrynn, meaning 'promontory') is a civil parish and town in west Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. It is on the Penryn River about northwest of Falmouth. The population was 7,166 in the 2001 census and had been reduced to 6 ...
, England, was a
granite Granite () is a coarse-grained (phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies undergro ...
quarry and the site of an early experiment in extracting
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 ...
from the earth using hot dry rock (HDR) technology.


Quarry

In the nineteenth century the quarry provided stone for building projects in Britain and abroad as well as for the Ponsanooth viaduct near Penryn and the Carnon Valley viaduct between
Truro Truro (; kw, Truru) is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city and civil parishes in England, civil parish in Cornwall, England. It is Cornwall's county town, sole city and centre for administration, leisure and retail trading. Its ...
and Falmouth.


Geothermal energy research project

The site was chosen as the research site because the
granite Granite () is a coarse-grained (phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies undergro ...
in the area has the highest heat flow in England (120 milliwatts per square metre). The trials began in 1977 in the wake of the
1973 oil crisis The 1973 oil crisis or first oil crisis began in October 1973 when the members of the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC), led by Saudi Arabia, proclaimed an oil embargo. The embargo was targeted at nations that had supp ...
and an earlier trial in the United States at Fenton Hill. The trials at Rosemanowes concluded in 1980, although studies continued until 1991. Funding for the initial project was provided by the
Department of Energy A Ministry of Energy or Department of Energy is a government department in some countries that typically oversees the production of fuel and electricity; in the United States, however, it manages nuclear weapons development and conducts energy-rel ...
(now the Department of Trade and Industry) and by the
European Commission The European Commission (EC) is the executive of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with 27 members of the Commission (informally known as "Commissioners") headed by a President. It includes an administrative body o ...
. The research facilities and staff transferred to Camborne School of Mines Associates Limited in 1992, the trading arm of the
Camborne School of Mines The Camborne School of Mines ( kw, Scoll Balow Cambron), commonly abbreviated to CSM, was founded in 1888. Its research and teaching is related to the understanding and management of the Earth's natural processes, resources and the environment. ...
. The project had two aims #To see if hot dry rocks could be fractured by water pressure alone, enabling a current of cold water from an inlet borehole to pass easily through the mass and to be collected at an outlet borehole some distance away. The trial proved to be successful, and showed that explosives were not required to fracture this Cornish hot granite at depth. #To find out if the rocks were hot enough to make steam for a turbine to generate electricity. This second aim was not achieved at the depths attained. Though the rocks did yield substantial quantities of hot water, to reach a temperature to generate steam hot enough to drive a turbine would have required drilling a further kilometre or more into the granite, an option which was too expensive to pursue at that time. With government and EU support the expertise of the scientists and engineers at Rosemanowes was used to support the European HDR project at
Soultz-sous-Forêts Soultz-sous-Forêts () is a commune in the Bas-Rhin department in Grand Est in north-eastern France. It is the site of the European Hot Dry Rocks energy research project. Notable people * George Abert, member of the Wisconsin State Assembly ...
, and a number of commercial contracts ensued exploiting HDR techniques, such as microseismic monitoring, in the oil and gas industry. Rosemanowes Quarry and the assets of CSMA, including intellectual property, were acquired by
Asea Brown Boveri ABB Ltd. is a Swedish-Swiss multinational corporation headquartered in Zürich, Switzerland. The company was formed in 1988 when Sweden's Allmänna Svenska Elektriska Aktiebolaget (ASEA) and Switzerland's Brown, Boveri & Cie merged to create ...
in 1997. In 2004,
Schlumberger Schlumberger Limited (), doing business as SLB, is an oilfield services company. Schlumberger has four principal executive offices located in Paris, Houston, London, and The Hague. Schlumberger is the world's largest offshore drilling compa ...
acquired the intellectual property and some of the staff most closely associated with microseismic monitoring and the quarry was sold off. In 2006, the site was acquired by 3K Facilities. The company now offers deep borehole test facilities in one of the best-logged sites in the world. All the deep boreholes are now available to hire for a range of down hole testing. There are three deep boreholes (, , ), four uncased holes and one hole inclined at 30degrees, as well as micro seismic testing and a wind turbine test environment on this site. Although the energy has not yet been exploited commercially, the data provided by the tests has been widely used to test numerical simulation codes. The
dataset A data set (or dataset) is a collection of data. In the case of tabular data, a data set corresponds to one or more database tables, where every column of a table represents a particular variable, and each row corresponds to a given record of the ...
contributed significantly to the geothermal power plant built with
European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been des ...
sponsorship at
Soultz-sous-Forêts Soultz-sous-Forêts () is a commune in the Bas-Rhin department in Grand Est in north-eastern France. It is the site of the European Hot Dry Rocks energy research project. Notable people * George Abert, member of the Wisconsin State Assembly ...
. In March 2013, the quarry was put up for sale by the owners 3K Facilities.


Borehole Seismic Test and Development Facility

In February 2014 Rosemanowes Quarry was purchased by Avalon Sciences (a Somerset-based borehole seismic instrumentation company) with the intention to develop the site in to an industry leading facility for testing down hole seismic and logging instrumentation. The extensively characterised boreholes and wells within homogenous granite facilitates an ideal locality to prove down hole seismic receivers and sources, all extensively used within the oil and gas exploration and monitoring industries. This site will be available for use to both industry and academic institutions by the end of 2014/early 2015.


Use by US forces during World War II

During the Second World War, the Quarry was used for storage by US forces, preparing for the invasion of Europe, which started in June 1944.BBC WW2 "The People's war":Memories site: Stithians.
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Location

The quarry is at
Herniss Herniss is a hamlet in the civil parish of Mabe in west Cornwall, England. Herniss is on the A394 main road.''Philip's Street Atlas Cornwall''. London: Philip's, 2003; p. 80 It is in the civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of ...
, to the north of the A 394 road, between Rame and
Longdowns Longdowns is a village in Cornwall, United Kingdom. It is situated on the A394 road approximately three miles (4.8 km) west of Penryn . Longdowns is in the civil parish of Stithians (where the population of the 2011 census is included.). ...
.
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, Explorer series, Map 103, : .


See also

*
Geothermal power in the United Kingdom The potential for exploiting geothermal energy in the United Kingdom on a commercial basis was initially examined by the Department of Energy in the wake of the 1973 oil crisis. Several regions of the country were identified, but interest in dev ...
*
Energy use and conservation in the United Kingdom Energy in the United Kingdom came mostly from fossil fuels in 2021. Total World energy supply and consumption, energy consumption in the United Kingdom was 142.0millionTonne of oil equivalent, tonnes of oil equivalent (1,651TWh) in 2019. In 20 ...
*
Renewable energy Renewable energy is energy that is collected from renewable resources that are naturally replenished on a human timescale. It includes sources such as sunlight, wind, the movement of water, and geothermal heat. Although most renewable energy ...


References


External links


3K Facilities company website
{{South West powerstations Geography of Cornwall Geology of Cornwall Geothermal power stations in England Power stations in South West England Quarries in Cornwall