NATURAL STEAM POWER.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19261, 27 August 1924, Page 8

NATURAL STEAM POWER.

HARNESSING EXTINCT VOLCANOES. ITALIAN EXPERIMENTS. (From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, July 19. An interesting lecture was given by Prince Ginori Conti at the World Power Conference on the utilisation of natural steam at Larderello, in Tuscany. The existence of steam wells is attributable to volcanoes now nearly extinct, and it was suggested that what has been done in Italy opens up the possibility of similar sources of natural energy being tapped in Alaska. California, South America, Japan, and New Zealand. Natural steam power has been available at Larderello since the year 1777, and was first utilised in 1818 for the production of boric acid, which is present in the steam. It was not. however, until 1904 that Prince Conti first grappled with the problem of using the natural steam in a small engine, and only in 1914 that the erection of a power station worked by this steam was put in hand. The existing plant consists of three turbo-alterna-tors, each of 2500 kilowatts capacity, in the first instance the natural steam was used to produce pure steam for feeding the turbines, but in the latest arrangement direct use is made of the natural steam. All the wells bored give steam at low pressure, not exceeding a working pressure of 1-i atmospheres. The Larderallo wells supply over 150,000 kilos .of steam per hour, and from new wells at Serrazzano a large quantity of steam at higher pressure is now obtained. This discovery has. it is stated, given the whole scheme j. new outlook, and experiments are in progress to determine the most efficient manner of utilising these very considerable resources of natural power.