Study to explore geothermal in national park on the Canary Islands
Timanfaya National Park, Canary Islands (source: flickr/ Jon Tribak, creative commons)
Alexander Richter
14 May 2022
An experimental project by the University of Navarra is going determine if it is feasible to take advantage of the geothermal energy of the Timanfaya National Park in the Canaries.
Last month, the University of Navarra has reached an agreement with the Canarian Government’s Department of Ecological Transition to study the feasibility of the project, which aims to generate clean electricity using the heat of the volcano, so a lcoal report by Motor.es.
Located on the island of Lanzarote, the Timanfaya is a tourist attraction of great value for the Canary Islands. Its National Park is visited by millions of people every year and the heat generated by this inactive volcano is even used to cook in the restaurant located on its top.
But the project that the University of Navarra is going to launch has little to do with tourism or cooking, but instead is aimed at generating clean energy.
For this, the UPNA is going to develop a six-month experimental project in which it wants to determine if it is feasible to take advantage of the geothermal energy of the Timanfaya National Park to generate electricity.
Currently, it is a fact that volcanic heat is capable of generating renewable energy, but in this experiment we want to check if it is possible to do it with a thermoelectric generator that takes advantage of the heat and generates electricity.
The agreement includes the design, construction and installation of GTEG prototypes of 0.5 electric kilowatts in the Islote de Hilario. All this with the aspiration of supplying 12 kWh of renewable energy every day for certain infrastructures of the National Park.
“In this way, Timanfaya will contribute to having the necessary technical knowledge so that, in the future, Lanzarote can obtain clean, emission-free and constant electrical energy in all those areas of the island where this type of geothermal anomaly may exist”, he indicated. José Antonio Valbuena, Minister of Ecological Transition of the Canarian Government.
One of the main advantages of this project developed by members of the University of Navarra is that, unlike conventional geothermal electrical energy production systems based on steam turbines, this technology is capable of generating electrical energy without any moving part . This makes it possible to obtain a much more compact, totally silent, very robust and reliable device , since it does not require maintenance or operation and is totally respectful of the environment.
Source: Motor.es
