Ocean inside Earth

[MemeFan]

It seems there is more water below ground than in worlds oceans.

Massive ocean discovered beneath the Earth's crust

It feels like there have been staggering science stories emerging every other day recently, all of which have blown our tiny little minds.First, there was the discovery of a terrifying black hole pointing right at us, then there was a huge hole found in the sun and a missing continent found...

www.indy100.com

 

[eye4them]

Thanks for posting. It's really interesting all the revelations that are taking place of late. I feel like we're entering a new age of knowledge.

But this potential new supply of water got me thinking.
400 miles... That's a long distance!

So I did a calculation...
4 liters of water (just over one gallon) weighs 4 kg.
To lift that 4 kg up 400 miles would require 25 MJ of energy.

For reference, 1 gallon of diesel contains about 140 MJ of energy. But diesel engines (for running the pumps) are only about 40% efficient, so the engine can deliver around 140*0.4 = 56 MJ of work to the pump per gallon of diesel it burns. That doesn't include the losses in the pump and 400 miles of plumbing.

So, it would take about one half gallon of diesel to lift about one gallon of water 400 miles. Wow that's expensive water!

For a comparison,
SWRO (seawater reverse osmosis) with pressure-recovery can process seawater into 1 gallon of fresh water for about 0.02 MJ* of work, or about 25/0.02 = 1250 times as much fresh water from sea water as from water 400 miles down.

*That 0.02 MJ is based on 1 gallon of water moved over an 800 psi (osmotic) pressure step, and does not include losses in the pump, and thus should be comparable with lifting one gallon of water 400 miles.

 

[DustinM]

"In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, on the seventeenth day of the second month, all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. 12 And the rain fell upon the earth for forty days and forty nights." - Gen 7

 

[FollowingHim]

The headlines on this are clickbaity and misleading. The article does not claim an ocean of liquid water 400 miles down. It claims that a particular rock might contain 1% water as part of its chemical composition. That is rather uninteresting, so let's label it a "massive ocean" instead!

 

[Mark C]

But@eye4them makes the important point. It's energy (and thus 'cost') that matters, and drives the economics.
It's the same reason that 'electric vehicles' replacing 'fossil fuels' (ha!) are a sick joke. The real economic answer (do the math) boils down to:
...peons stay home. No driving for you. (And ultimately, no power, either...)