Multiple Clean Marine Fuels from a Novel DHDRG-driven Plant Near Seattle
Proposed 27 March 25 as a “new project” for the Pacific Northwest Hydrogen Hub, this $ US 1.1 billion, 300 MWe nameplate plant would derive all its energy from DHDRG harvested from directly beneath the plant via “fracked” (Enhanced Geothermal Systems, EGS) or closed-loop bored (Advanced Geothermal Systems (AGS) heat exchangers at-depth, about 5 to 10 km. The plant would probably be located at or near Cherry Point, north of Seattle, where several legacy oil refineries and apparently-adequate vacant coastal land are located. The marine fuels plant would load bunkering barges at its dock on Strait of Georgia, which barges would fuel vessels at or near the ports of Seattle and Vancouver, BC. Thermal DHDRG energy would be converted at Earth’s surface to electricity, then to “clean”, GHG-emission-free hydrogen, for delivery as liquid hydrogen (LH2) or other derived fuels, such as liquid methanol and anhydrous ammonia (NH3). The primary customer would be the 4.5 month summer Southeast Alaska cruise ship industry, which in recent years has sent about 40 ships to Alaska, burning about 200 million gallons of ship fossil fuel annually; this industry launched a “Green Corridor” project in 2023, to propose substituting “green” and “clean” fuels for the fossil fuels. Bunkered fuel(s) prices would need to be competitive with other “clean” and “green” fuels.
More Info: AASI-CombinedFullApp-27Mar25-PNWH2Hub.pdf
Electro Pulse Boring (EPB)
- Application for the MacArthur Foundation $ 100 million “100&CHANGE ” grant, to bring EPB from about Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 3 to TRL 8: pre commercialization.
- ” 100&CHANGE ” application video
- 2017 brief TechConnect conference paper for AASI’s Innovation Showcase booth
- Slide presentation, based on an October 2012 presentation in Guangzhou, China, by Prof Arild Rodland, NTNU (retired), EPB principal investigator
Although AASI owns no equity nor IP in EPB, we decided to use the opportunity of applying for the MacArthur Foundation single $ 100 million “100&CHANGE” grant to articulate the technical and economic case for investing in advancing EPB technology, in order to discover and demonstrate its merit via field boring trials. If EPB can be commercialized — providing affordable, equitable, benign, inexhaustible, baseload energy, almost anywhere on Earth, it could transform the world’s largest industry, from ~ 80 % fossil sources today to ~ 100 % renewable, CO2-emission-free sources, as quickly as we prudently and profitably can.
Here are the application and description files. AASI’s “100&CHANGE” application was not selected by MacArthur to advance in the grant award process.
MacArthur received over 1,900 applications for this single, large grant. We wish MacArthur Foundation and all applicants well.
We will be glad to connect parties considering investing in EPB advancement with the leading EPB investigators, historic and current, as best we know them.