How Does The Marshall Hydrothermal Recovery System Work

How Does The Marshall Hydrothermal Recovery System Work?

Nowadays, it seems as if everyone is plugged in and in constant need for energy. Dependant on energy, our generation gets most of it from fossil fuels, nuclear technology, and solar power, however, could there be a way of harvesting energy at a much more efficient rate than we currently are? The Marshall Hydrothermal Recovery System is a way we can reap the mass amounts of heat produced by naturally occurring sea vents deep down in the ocean.

Discovered in 1977, these sea vents, or hydrothermal vents, are actually by-products of plate tectonics which have a potential to produce enormous amounts of energy. Down approximately 2300 meters below the surface, water eventually reaches the earth’s magma “where it is superheated and then returned to the ocean at temperatures as high as 400o C.” These hydrothermal vents produce a “black smoke” which is actually a variety of metals and nutrients that sustain ecosystems based around these vents. When the water is heated by the magma, it t picks up some of the

Although this means the death of a whole ecosystem, hydrothermal vents are never permanent themselves, always popping up in different areas due to the shifting plate tectonics. The “flow is fed into a continuous, highly insulated pipe, which leads to an oil platform located on the surface above the vent.” Different forms of physics allow the superheated fluid to be carried off. Within the platform, the heat can then be extracted to produce energy. However, the process doesn’t stop there. Since “the amount of energy available from any thermal system is dependent on the difference in temperature between two points”, there is another open pipe that sucks in the freezing waters that the superheated fluid would usually be surrounded by. More energy can be extracted by using the freezing water as a cold side to the heat reaction. (Marshall