HARNESSING VOLCANOES

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 38, 14 February 1931, Page 9 (Supplement)

HARNESSING VOLCANOES

MAKING IDLE GIANTS WORK.

TREMENDOUS POSSIBILITIES'.

VULCAN AS A HANDY MiyN.

(By VINCENT WILCOX.)

Volcanoes have never been of much use to mankind. Awake, they are violent and incorrigible and do nothing but harm. Asleep and idle, they are endured and men have been glad to let them lie. Yet to engineers it has long seemed a gross waste that the tremendous energy of these giants should not be harnessed and put to work. Of late, the men of science have given special study to the problem of taming the monsters and have even begun to succeed at the seemingly superhuman task. Already means have been found whereby steam from subterranean sources can be utilised for industrial purposes. In Italy electricity derived from volcanic heat is sent over wires to Florence, Leghorn, Piombino and other cities and towns for light and power. Borings for volcanic steam are now being made on the slopes of "Etna, and also on the island of Culcano, which is one of the Lipari • group, north of Sicily. " The Lipari Islands are subsidiary peaks of Stromboli, whose crater was supposed by the ancients to be the main entrance to Pluto's fiery realm. Vulcano wa3 the headquarters of the blacksmith god. In Bolivia the Government has granted a concession for the use of. steam from Mount Tatio, in the Sud Lipoz district, near the Chilian frontier, The volcano is to be made to drive turbine engines, which aro oxnected to electrify all the Bolivian railroads. Energy Wasting in Yellowstone. Important as the development of the usefulness of volcanic steam has proved in Northern Italy, there are also great opportunities in the Yellowstone Park region of the United States. The geysers anl boiling springs of that country indicate terrific temperatures to be found not far underground. In the socalled Fire Hole district the whole country seems to be burning. Doubtless the Yellowstone was the scene of tremendous eruptive activity not very long ago. The engineers see great possibilities in the American national park as a source of cheap electrical power, the most attractive thing in the world to the manufacturer. Hence, perhaps before the end of the present century, new and prosperous industrial cities •will arise in that part of the country, vitalised by electricity derived from the volcanic plants of the Yellowstone. The requisite experimental work has already been done, largely, at least, in Italy. The Italian engineers have solved the chief problems. One important thing they have learned is that it will not do to use the volcanic steam (direct for driying engines, because it.

contains corrosive chemical salts. They employ the subterranean vapour as fuel to make steam from pure. water. To resist the corrosive action, the apparatus "that handles the volcanic | steam is provided with pipes of aluminium. The scene of the successful Italian operations is a region in Tuscany, j north-west of Rome, where, over an area of 40 square miles, numerous natural <steam „ wellg, called "puffing holes," are found. They go down, evidently, to great depths, all of them presumably deriving their steam from the same volcanic source.. Oyt of them the" steam spurts in vigorous jets. Some of them form small 'lake-like craters, full of. boiling - Water. . Free Earth Energy Meant Industrial Development. The puffing holes are thickly scattered for 30 miles along a valley, which, until recent years, was almost wholly uninhabited. To-day the valley has a number of thriving towns that owe their existence to the steam wells. The volcanic steam contains a very valuable product, boric acid, for which there is a large export demand. The glass factories of France and other large consumers of boric acid were formerly compelled to rely for supplies mainly upon imports of borax fetched on the backs of pack animals across the Himalayas from Tibet, i Discovery that the stuff could be got from the steam wells of Tuscany gave great industrial importance to the region here described, though the method at first adopted for separating it was extremely crude, the water from the puffing holes being evaporated in iron pots over wood fires. To increase the available supply of water, an Italian engineer named Ciatichi undertook to drill artificial puffing holes. The experiment proved a big success. Ciaschi lost his life by falling into one of the boiling springs which he himself had created; but the borings have been continued, and, though they now number thousands, they do not seem to have diminished in the slightest degree the flow of steam from the natural holes. The Avells are bored usually to a depth' of about 400 ft, and are lined with iron tubes Bin to 16in in diameter. At the mouths of the puffing holes, both natural and- artificial, the pressure of steam remains always the same, year after year, the subterranean heat supply being apparently inexhaustible. Nowadays the water is evaporated in huge lead-lined " pans, beneath which live steam fresh from the depths is conducted through coils of pipe. Eighteen years ago Prince Ginori Conti, head of the boric acid works in the valley, turned the steam from a puffing hole into a piston engine. It was the first engine ever driven by volcanic power, and it ran admirably. In fact, it has been running evpr since. A bigger one was built in the following year, which operated a dynamo and lit the works at 'Larderello, the chief of the industry. 5 Towns Near Get Light and Power. In 1910 a turbo-generator of 5J500 kilowatts was installed, which sent volcanic electricity over wires to Volterra, a distance of 30 miles. Thus Volterra, one of the oldest towns in the world—older, indeed, than Koine |

by many centuries —was the first to draw electric energy from a subterranean source. Since tlien tlic plant has been vastly expanded, and a larger one has been established at Lage, in the same district. From these central stations the "juice" is distributed over a' wide territory, supplying light and power to Siena, Florence and west coast cities, 50 miles or more away. The towns in the valley get their light and power from the same volcanic source. One puffing hole near Larderello yields from 60001b to 30,0001b of steam an hour, at a temperature of 356 degrees Fahrenheit. Eleven average borings (not less productive than the natural wells) deliver power equal to that obtainable from the burning of ten tons of coal an liouThus it will be seeni that the first steps in utilising voicanic steam has been well worked out by the Italian engineers, and their experience will benefit later development. — (A.A.N.S. Copyright.)