Lehigh University researchers are part of a team that will test whether the heat beneath Pennsylvania can power homes, businesses, and farms, using infrastructure the state’s energy industry has already built.
Lehigh has received $1.6 million to participate in the “Commonwealth of Pennsylvania EGS Pilot Demonstration,” a U.S. Department of Energy-funded project led by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). The total project budget is about $14 million. The “EGS” stands for enhanced geothermal system.
“This project shows what’s possible when faculty work across disciplinary and college boundaries,” said Robert Flowers, Herbert J. and Ann L. Siegel Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. “Earth scientists from the College of Arts and Sciences and engineers from the P.C. Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Science are bringing complementary expertise to a problem neither could solve alone. Research like this matters because discoveries don't stay in the lab. It’s designed to bring new possibilities to Pennsylvania communities, and it reflects Lehigh’s commitment to scholarship that serves the people and places around us.”
The goal is to generate one megawatt of electricity from a low-enthalpy, underperforming Marcellus Shale gas well in Indiana County, Pennsylvania. The project will draw heat from an underperforming natural gas well by circulating water at depth, and then bring that heated water to the surface. That heated water energy will produce electricity for the local grid and supply direct-use heat to nearby homes and businesses.
“Pennsylvania’s conventional hydrocarbon industry, followed by the shale oil and gas revolution left behind a vast network of wells and related infrastructure ,” said Frank Pazzaglia, professor of Earth and environmental sciences in Lehigh’s College of Arts and Sciences and the principal investigator. “This project asks whether we can give that infrastructure a second life as a clean, renewable energy source.”