EMERYVILLE, CA
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to Perform Research that Advances GreenFire Energy’s Next Generation Geothermal Power System for Renewable Energy
GreenFire Energy Inc. today announced that it has been selected by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) for the Small Business Vouchers (SBV) pilot. The Department of Energy pilot pairs innovative businesses developing clean energy technologies across the nation with world-class laboratory resources and expertise to accelerate the availability of the technologies to the marketplace. GreenFire will work closely with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) to further research technologies for creating small regions of high permeability in deep, very hot geothermal resources.
“The Small Business Vouchers Pilot allows innovative entrepreneurs greater access to the world-class resources and brilliant minds in our national labs,” said David Danielson, assistant secretary for the DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. “The partnership between Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and GreenFire Energy Inc. is an example of how the DOE is working to bring clean energy technologies to commercialization faster.”
Joseph Scherer, chief executive officer of GreenFire Energy Inc. underscored the importance of this project, “Creating small permeable zones between two or more cased well bottoms will allow us to substantially reduce the risk and cost of constructing our next generation of supercritical CO2 closed loop systems.”
The project will investigate the creation and maintenance of small fracture zones in very hot dry rock. The research will be conducted by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Computational Geosciences Group, led by Dr. Joseph Morris and the Experimental and Applied Geophysics Group, led by Dr. Rick Ryerson. “Determining how to create small fracture networks in hot, ductile rocks deep within the crust will be a challenging problem, but we are confident we have the right people and the best tools to assess the feasibility,” Ryerson said.
“The GreenFire LLNL SBV collaboration is an excellent example of applying unique national laboratory codes and computational expertise to an applied energy problem,” said Jeff Roberts, Lawrence Livermore’s deputy director for Energy and Climate Security. “GreenFire’s novel geothermal process will benefit from LLNL’s advanced codes that predict the effects of dynamic loading and the resulting fracture network.”
Both groups use the GEOS and Geodyn-L codes developed at LLNL to model the creation of a downhole fracture zone permitting subsequent flow of supercritical CO2. GEOS is a massively parallel, multi-physics simulation application utilizing high performance computing to address subsurface reservoir stimulation activities. The GEOS code has extensively used simulations supported by DOE’s Geothermal Technologies Office. The Geodyn-L code models more energetic fracturing techniques.
About GreenFire Energy Inc.
GreenFire Energy Inc. is developing utility-scale CO2-based geothermal energy based on its ECO2G™ technology for power projects worldwide. ECO2G generates reliable, affordable, baseload and flexible power with zero emissions, excellent environmental attributes, and little or no water consumption. GreenFire estimates that ECO2G increases the total available geothermal resource an order of magnitude over that of conventional geothermal technology. GreenFire is a privately held company based in Emeryville, CA. For more information see www.greenfireenergy.com.
Media Contact
John Muir
SVP Business Development
GreenFire Energy Inc.
888-320-2721
john.muir@greenfireenergy.com