A startup born out of MIT is aiming to repower the world’s fossil fuel infrastructure with heat from deep inside the Earth. Quaise Energy, a spinout from MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, is developing an ambitious approach to unlock geothermal energy from unprecedented depths. The company’s technology uses powerful millimeter-wave beams, made from vacuum electronic devices called gyrotrons, to vaporize rock and drill ultra-deep holes. The goal: tap into heat sources at depths of 10 to 20 kilometers (6 to 12 miles), where rock temperatures exceed 500 °C (930 °F).
At that depth, geothermal heat is available almost everywhere on Earth. This means that any country could have an almost limitless source of energy, without using precious resources. “If we can drill down to 20 kilometers,” said Quaise co-founder Matt Houde, “we can access these super-hot temperatures in greater than 90 percent of locations across the globe.”
For its pilot project, Quaise Energy will use a shuttered coal plant in upstate New York. Why? Because the grid connections are still intact. The turbine is still functional, too. Quaise plans to restart the plant, but powered by clean, geothermal steam instead of coal.
This concept isn’t theoretical. Gyrotrons have been used in nuclear fusion research for decades. Paul Woskov, a longtime MIT research engineer, first proposed applying gyrotrons to drill rock in 2008. Since then, he has tested the concept on a lab scale. Quaise was formed in 2018 to take that work further.
Now, the startup is scaling up. In the next year, it plans to vaporize holes 100 times deeper than Woskov’s original lab tests. The goal is to begin drilling in the field by late 2025 and to harvest energy from a pilot well by 2026.
And the vision doesn’t stop there. Because Quaise’s geothermal output can match the operating temperatures of today’s coal and gas plants, the company plans to retrofit these facilities. No need for new power stations or transmission lines. Just a new energy source underground, with no emissions.
The challenge now is engineering, not physics. Material removal, well stability, and cost-effective scalability remain on the roadmap. But the opportunity is massive. If successful, Quaise could provide carbon-free, baseload energy almost anywhere on the planet, with the potential to power humanity for millions of years.
IImage & Article source by MIT News
