Clean Energy From Filthy Water
A.
- Santa Rosa and Calpine Corporation, an energy company, are partners in the world’s largest geothermal wastewater-to-power project
- Every day the Santa Rosa Geysers Recharge Project pumps some 12 million gallons of treated wastewater through a pipeline to a mountaintop 40 miles from the city and then injects it down into an aquifer a mile and a half underground
- The Obama administration is touting geothermal as a clean energy source
- The benefits to Santa Rosa are many, however, says Dan Carlson, the city’s deputy director of operations
- For santa rosa, that unique something is the Geysers, a misnamed field of fumaroles: vents in rock formations that leak steam
- High in the hills between the two communities, officials at Calpine’s geothermal operation were also in a quandary
- The partnerships Calpine formed with Santa Rosa and Lake County fixed all three problems with one simple solution: moving the wastewater to where it was wanted
- Officials in both counties are proud of their project’s environmental achievements, but they take equal satisfaction in the regulatory and financial stability they have brought
- The Geysers have been hissing for millennia, part of a geothermal system east of the San Andreas Fault
- When William Bell Elliott wandered through in 1847 as a member of a large survey team, he dubbed the steam fields the Geysers
- Rainfall could not seep into the sandstone reservoir fast enough to refill the reserves
- For residents who live within 20 miles of the production area, however, the scene is anything but pastoral
- Calpine uses $2.5 million worth of its own geothermal electricity annually to pump the water to this peak, where it is stored before being injected into the steam fields east of the Mayacamas crest
- By generating 200 megawatts of electricity from wastewater, Santa Rosa and Lake County have effectively reduced greenhouse gas emissions by two billion pounds a year: the amount that a coal-burning power plant of comparable size would spew into the atmosphere
- For entrepreneurs and scientists hoping to expand the use of geothermal energy nationwide, the Calpine project offers a wealth of experience
- For the many potential sites that lack an adequate supply of water to inject into the hot rocks, the power plants at the Geysers still serve as an inspiration
B. There are many cities in California that are pumping treated wastewater to produce energy. One of these cities is Santa Rosa and everyday geysers pump around 12 million gallons of treated wastewater. This wastewater ends up being injected into an aquifer about a mile and a half underground. This technique has a chance to supply about 10% of the United States water in 2050. This method of generating wastewater has reduced about two billion pounds of greenhouse gas emissions which is an amazing change for the environment. There are three steps in how wastewater is used: physical treatment of sedimentation tanks to remove impurities, biological treatment to break down the organic matter/remove nutrients, and activated carbon filtration to remove the remaining organic matter and parasites. This water is pumped annually and this makes it so people living near the pump may experience some earthquakes. The federal agencies had to put this project on hold due to the earthquakes but I believe that this is a step in the right direction to try and help the environment.
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C. After reading this article, I was actually very impressed with the amount of good this method of energy generating is. Im surprised that we have not utilized this method of producing energy to other less populated areas considering that the only issue with this is the fact that this method causes earthquakes to occur. I do like the idea of using dirty water to be able to generate water considering that if we did not, there would be no other use for this and it would just be a problem for marine life. The fact that we are reusing dirty water that we are not using anyways and using it for good is something I am very happy with. A part that really made me impressed is the amount of greenhouse gas emissions that we prevented due to this. This is a solution to many environmental problems and I believe that this is just the start to many bigger and greater things towards having a clean Earth.
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