As we drill down the rocks of earths crust, the temperature typically increases by 3°C for every 100 m of depth. Oil wells can be drilled to depth of 1830 m. If water is pumped into the shaft of the well it will be heated by the hot rock at the bottom and the resulting steam can be used as a heat engine. Assume that the surface temperature is 20°C A) using such a 1830 m well as a heat engine, what is the maximum efficiency possible? B) if a combination of such wells is to produce a 2.5×10^6 W power plant, how much energy will it absorb from the interior of earth each day?

As we drill down the rocks of earths crust, the temperature typically increases by 3°C for every 100 m of depth. Oil wells can be drilled to depth of 1830 m. If water is pumped into the shaft of the well it will be heated by the hot rock at the bottom and the resulting steam can be used as a heat engine. Assume that the surface temperature is 20°C A) using such a 1830 m well as a heat engine, what is the maximum efficiency possible? B) if a combination of such wells is to produce a 2.5×10^6 W power plant, how much energy will it absorb from the interior of earth each day?

Similar questions

Question 17 A certain engine extracts 1300 J of heat from a hot temperature reservoir and discharges 700 Jof heat to a cold temperature reservoir. What is the efficiency of this engine? O 27% O 54% O 80% O 13% O 40%
On a cold day, 17400 J of heat leaks out of a house. The inside temperature is 24.0° C, and the outside temperature is -13° C. What is the increase in the entropy of the universe that this heat loss produces?
A real (non-Carnot) heat engine, operating between heat reservoirs at temperatures of 524 and 287 performs 2.4 kJ of net work and rejects 3.6 kJ of heat in a single cycle. What is the thermal efficiency of this heat engine in decimal form ( with two decimal places)?
You are hired to build a geothermal power plant that absorbs heat from a hot water spring and discards heat into the surrounding air, which is at a temperature of 17°. The plant is designed for a maximum (Carnot) efficiency of 0.21. What is the temperature, in degrees Celsius, of the hot water gushing from the spring? If the rate of energy supplied to the plant by the hot-water source is 4.6 kW, what is the plant’s maximum rate of power output, in kilowatts?
4. A typical coal-fired power plant operates with a high-temperature reservoir at Th = 800 K and a low-temperature reservoir at Tc = 300 K. What is the maximum efficiency allowed by the 2nd law of thermodynamics (the Carnot efficiency) for a heat engine operating between these temperatures? Give your answer as a decimal number, not as a percentage. (This isn't in section 4.2, so you might want to also take a quick look at equation 4.5 in section 4.5 of the textbook, or at the introductory material in this week's lab write-up.)
Heat engines take input energy in the form of heat, use some of that energy to do work, and exhaust the remainder. Similarly, a person can be viewed as a heat engine that takes an input of internal energy, uses some of it to do work, and gives off the rest as heat. Suppose a trained athlete can function as a heat engine with an efficiency of 0.16. (a) What is the magnitude of the internal energy that the athlete uses in order to do 1.7x104 J of work? (b) Determine the magnitude of the heat the athlete gives off.
What is the Carnot efficiency (in percent) of a heat engine operating between the temperatures of 395°C (668 K) and 170°C (443 K)?
An ice cube at 0.0°C is slowly melting. What is the change in the ice cube’s entropy for each 5.80 g of ice that melts? Latent heat of fusion of ice is 333.7 J/g.
A particular power plant operates with a heat-source reservoir at 350°C and a heatsink reservoir at 30°C. It has a thermal efficiency equal to 55% of the Carnot-engine thermal efficiency for the same temperatures. What is the thermal efficiency of the plant? To what temperature must the heat-source reservoir be raised to increase the thermal efficiency of the plant to 35%? Again, η is 55% of the Carnot-engine value
The temperature at the surface of the Sun is approximately 5,600 K, and the temperature at the surface of the Earth is approximately 291 K. What entropy change of the Universe occurs when 4.50 103 J of energy is transferred by radiation from the Sun to the Earth? ____________ J/K
A heat engine is being designed to have a Carnot efficiency of 60% when operating between two heat reservoirs. (a) If the temperature of the cold reservoir is 20°C, what must be the temperature of the hot reservoir? °C (b) Can the actual efficiency of the engine be equal to 60%? O Yes O No Explain your answer.
What is the Carnot efficiency (in percent) of a heat engine operating between the temperatures of 360°C (633 K) and 200°C (473 K)?