Big Sulfer Creek Valley

Behind and way below those trees, sits my office/lab, while the well site location isn't all that attractive, the general location is:



These pics were taken about 1200 feet above and a half mile away from the rig.

An Accreationary Wedge is Comming (repost)

An Accreationary Wedge is coming!
An Accreationary Wedge is coming!

This one; Accretionary Wedge #16 ... #15 #17, Recent Advancements (recent and/or noteable advancements or epiphanies that have directly affected your expertise, interests, or the work you do).

Not this one:


It shall be hosted right where your looking, this entry makes a nice little place holder. Please post a link to your articles in comments, or email them to me at Thorthr at cox.net. I will be deleting this post when the Wedge goes up and I'll have the Wedge up by Wednesday, December 24^th, 2008 Friday, March 20, 2009 (vernal equinox).

thanks
KC

P.S.
yes, that is xmas eve, gives you plenty of time to write something, even longer.

P.P.S.
ok, looks like I'm actually hosting #17 instead of #16 or #15 I picked up off of the who's hosting site:) thanks Dave, for saving me from have to do the math and subtract two instead of one

P.P.P.S
Sorry for all the delays, procrastination, and work conflicts are pain.
David and Lockwood, you havn't been forgotten.

BANG

See that little red star? That is the epicenter of an earthquake this morning, about 700 feet from where I was standing. There are a lot of minor quakes like that out here in the Geysers, in a one hour time span around that quake, there was a total of seven small quakes. What made this one interesting to me was the fact that I was practically on top of the epicenter, it didn't even feel like a regular quake, just a big BANG! Cool.

edit, it was the equvilant to someone setting off 4.74 tons of TNT a mile and half down.

LOLgeothermal

Ormat Technologies
Clean, renewable energy


Your doing it right!



Note, the full pic is 8.55M, it's eleven ten megapixel pictures stitched together
its big enough you can actually read the rig name on the mast

An Accreationary Wedge is Comming

An Accreationary Wedge is coming!
An Accreationary Wedge is coming!

This one; Accretionary Wedge #16 #15, Recent Advancements (recent and/or noteable advancements that have directly affected your expertise, interests, or the work you do).

Not this one:


It shall be hosted right where your looking, this entry makes a nice little place holder. Please post a link to your articles in comments, or email them to me at Thorthr at cox.net. I will be deleting this post when the Wedge goes up and I'll have the Wedge up by Wednesday, December 24^th, 2008.

thanks
KC

P.S.
yes, that is xmas eve, gives you plenty of time to write something.

P.P.S.
ok, looks like I'm actually hosting #15 instead of #16 I picked up off of the who's hosting site:) thanks Dave, for saving me from have to do the math and subtract two instead of one

The Geysers, in Haiku

Suvrat Kher started a geology haiku meme, so I had to put in my $0.02

Franciscan mélange
Free energy to produce
Mesozoic rocks


Steam from the ground abundant
Turbines spinning true to form
Heat source age debates



Holocene’s winter’s cold
Cloud factories issuance
Money drives it all

rocks with hair

One of the procedures when completing a well here in the Imperial Valley, is to change over the well to a KCl solution (mixed to a specific gravity of around 9.2 lbs/gallon), this helps manage the clays in the formation and is heavy enough prevent the hot geothermal fluids from coming up the well bore. The real problem with this stuff is its cost, its not cheap. It is normally separated form NaCl and other minerals from salt domes and other sources of brine (my favorite is the basins seen from Dead Horse Point, Utah, even though it is rather disruptive to the scenery). Some care must be taken with it as it can interfere with electrical function of the heart.
This lump of claystone/siltstone was saturated with some of the solution in the well and was circulated out of the well bore. It started to dry in my petri dish and sprouted KCl hairs as the crystals nucleated on the surface of the clay. Pretty much formed these hairs in about 24 hours of exposure to air.



and just a pretty pick, here is Nabors 58, with some "sort of" noctilucent clouds.

the sun was already going over the mountains to the west.

a rumble in distance...

Who says several megawatts of practically free energy can't be pretty.

edit: for the environmentally paranoid, that's just steam coming out of the muffler.

MoMoney

Just completed the next well, it's impressive, here is the flow test into the muffler at about 25% on the valve.

A funny thing happend to me on the way to work.......

Geology is an interesting discipline; we seem to be able to recognize one another, by the oddest means. For example, I was leaving the hotel for the rig the other morning and there is a guy ahead of me, we both head to the break fast bar, and grab a couple tubs of yogurt, then both of us head out the door carrying a pack and wearing coveralls. We are parked right next to each other, backed into the parking spaces, and he goes





“is that your jeep?”
yes, it is I say
“are you a geologist?” he asks.
Why, yes, I am, I respond.
"thought so" he states.
Is that your truck, I ask in turn.
“Yes, it is” he returns.
you must be a geologist too, I observe
“yup”.

Scarry world out there ;)

Aural Presence: Redux

edit: ok, these are raw video, so they are bigger than youtube or google video, they are 4M and 2M, so be patient while they load, on the other hand, the resolution is much better than if the other services were used.

This is a couple short vids of a long term flowtest of the last well we completed (48hrs of flow) the wells here on blue mountain are quite spectacular, there is enough down hole pressure to start the wells to flow, then, as the column of water in the bore heats up, some of it flashes into steam, lowering the weight of the column, allowing even more flow (not actual weight, but density loss due to flash and increase in the velocity of flow). These tests actually measure not just the amount of water flowing from the well, but the actual total enthalpy from both phases of the flow (steam and water) to get an energy content, thereby knowing how much electricity may be generated by the well. Turn your speakers up just a bit, and the treble down if you can, and under the noise of the wind blowing over the mic, you can hear the low rumble of the flow into the muffler/separator, the mic on the camera doesn't pick up low end all that well (go figure) but it really is an aural presence, the vibration is transmitted into the ground, and felt through your feet as well as felt/heard through the air.


The second vid is of where the James Tube is inserted into the muffler, just so you know, the well is throttled back to about 50% on the control valve, so its not flowing as hard as it could (50% on the valve does not necessarily mean 50% flow, the flow can stop increasing at less than a 100% valve setting) the gauge on the very end of the James Tube reads about 35 psi, pretty good actually (not as powerful as the Puna, Hawaii wells, those things are something else, some of them have been known to flow over a million pounds per hour, this one is (educated guessing here) a bit over 150k#/hr). The ventury effect of the flow into the muffler is apparent, and the rumble is a lot easier to hear from this angle.

Headgear-a-plenty

One of the things as ubiquitous as mountains in the basin and range, are abandoned mines, here is a few pics of a mine on the way to the rig.

I was hoping for more sunlight on the far mountains (which I have to drive around to get to Winnemucca). The headgear of the mine stands out on the horizon as you drive by, a nice 4x4 trail leads up to it. I'm not too sure what was mined here, but from the spoils that are piled all around, I would judge some kind of sulfide ore, most likely cinnabar, I found several small pieces of the red ore around, mixed in with the hydrothermal alteration of the native rock, possibly a phyllite.

A view down the mineshaft, showing the rails for the carts, whoever mined here was not claustrophobic.

deciduous basalt?

Lava trees, at Lava Trees State park near Pahoa, an interesting formation of basalt lava, when it up and wraps itself around a ohia tree, then the bulk of the very fluid flow drains away, leaving the cooled remnant standing upright.

these are 'O'hia trees that are growing on a 1954 aa lava flow

sometimes, the contact and cooling is fast enough to preserve surface textures of the bark on the gnarled trees, in a chamber running up the middle of the lava tree (mold), but the light was failing me so I couldn't get a good picture of the inside tube/chamber to show this texture. The tree eventually burns/rots out of the mold cavity. Some of these geologic feature range from just holes in the ground to almost 20 feet tall.




my attempt at a stereo pair, good luck


EDIT: I've been trying to get back to the park and retake the stereo pair, unfortunately, its has rained pretty consistently and I haven't had the chance. My flight leaves in a few hours, and I may not have the chance to go back again until early next year (crosses fingers).

ooooooooo paradise

It snowed the day after I left to come to Hawaii, it was 76 in Hilo when I landed, i was impressed, you know the weather is mild somewhere the airport and related facilities often only have a roof, no walls. It does rain a lot here, to the tune of 150 inches a year here on the eastern rift zone of the island Hawaii (if that doesn't make sense too you, neenerneener, I'm a geologist, I'll be happy to teach you geology, not geography, geography is just overburden to us hardrock types). here is a simple pic, of a rainbow over a flash separation facility.

Splat! (in ultra slow motion: Wavelite)

Al3(PO4)2(OH)3-(H2O)5, Hydrated Aluminum Phosphate Hydroxide


Wavelite is an interesting mineral, its a soft, yellow-green, what makes it so interesting is it habit of forming radiating globules of crystals, so much so that when you see this Crystal form in a book, wavelite will be the picture they show you to demonstrate this. The crystals them selves are actually orthorhombic needles radiating from the center (radiating along the c-axis; very long, skinny crystals). I found this sample in a small rock shop in California while driving down the 101

Moment Tensor Solutions

The magnitude 5.6 earthquake near San Jose on Tuesday is one of the most "classic" strike/slip fault rupture I've seen in a while, it makes reading a moment tensor solution of the waves very easy, the west side of the fault moving north west (Vader voice on)"come to the dark side Luke"(Vader voice off), tensors like these can be hard to read sometimes without a good idea of what faults in the locality are doing already, lucky for us, this location is very well documented, and the motion was almost totally along the strike of the fault. (thanks to the USGS for collating this information into one, easy to find location)