An Unusual Harvest From Abandoned Mines
In this two part series at Abandoned Mine Posts, we’ll examine the potential for minepool water to be used as a geothermal heat source. This week , we’ll look at efforts already underway in Canada to tap into the heat below. In the second installment of the series, we’ll stay closer to home and see how others think the Pittsburgh seam minepools can serve as an alternative energy source.
Part I: Canadian Efforts
By Andy McAllister, Watershed Coordinator
With the first days of autumn finally upon us, those crisp fall mornings begin to shake us out of our warm summer stupor and bring us to the one stark reality of winter–heating our homes. This harvest season, we suggest something different, harvesting energy from abandoned mine workings.
The amount of underground mine water located throughout Appalachia’s coal regions is immense and while it may seem cool to the touch as it discharges to the surface, it remains at a fairly constant temperature deep within the earth (somewhere near the low to mid-50s Farenheit). This groundwater stored in abandoned underground mine workings, is an incredible thermal resource just waiting to be tapped. With the help of geothermal heat pump technology, minewater at that temperature could be used to help heat homes and businesses.
In fact, our neighbors to the north have been exploring geothermal energy possibilities for some time. In Nova Scotia, Canada, the town of Springhill (a town with a long history of coal mining and mine disasters) is using its minepool water not just to heat the community center, but to cool the ice for its hockey rink. The town of Springhill isn’t alone in its exploration of innovative ways to heat and cool, the town of Yellowknife in Canada’s Northwest Territory, 250 miles south of the Arctic Circle, is also looking into using old mine workings as a geothermal heat source. Yellowknife’s geothermal feasibility study, released earlier this spring, revealed that the the network of old mine tunnels below the south end of town can be used to help heat up to 2,000 homes.
Click here to read a Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC) article about how Springhill became the first in the world to use water from an abandoned mine to make ice for its hockey rink.
Click here to read a short article on the CBC website about the results of a geothermal feasibility study conducted on the mines below Yellowknife.
CBC video links about Geothermal energy
Click here to watch a video on CBCs “Green Rush” series website entitled, ” The Godfather of Geothermal”. The video features Ralph Ross of Springhill, Nova Scotia who has been working in geothermal energy since the 80’s and is finally seeing his idea take off.
Click here to watch a CBC video entitled, “The Heat Below” explaining geothermal heating, also at the “Green Rush” series website.