US startup raises $180 million to drill rock more than 5 km deep and build world’s first 500°C superhot geothermal plant

Quaise Energy, an American startup, announced on August 27 the final closing of a $180 million funding round, which included $35 million from Nabors, to fund the Obsidian Project in Oregon, where a microwave gyrotron will create boreholes in rock between 300°C and 500°C to establish the planet’s first commercial superhot geothermal plant, according to a report by ThinkGeoEnergy.According to the statement, the Series B totals $180 million, bringing the startup’s total funding to $280 million since its inception. The first tranche, worth $134 million, was previously announced on July 7, led by Prelude Ventures with participation from Japanese companies JERA and Idemitsu Kosan. The new addition to the list is Nabors Industries, one of the largest oil and gas drillers in the world, which contributed $35 million and signed a strategic agreement. According to the statement, Nabors will provide a dedicated land platform and integrate its reservoir modeling, well design and drilling strategy platform into the project. In other words, the oil and gas industry is lending a platform, software and personnel for a technology that promises to eliminate the need for a drill bit.

Vaporize a stone without touching it

A gyrotron is a millimeter wave generator, a high-frequency microwave technology created to heat plasma in nuclear fusion reactors. According to MIT News, engineer Paul Woskov of the MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center spent 14 years testing the concept of directing this beam downward. Their description is simple: they are very powerful ray sources, similar to lasers, but in a different frequency range.In practice, the beam travels along a waveguide to the bottom of the well, heating the rock to the point of melting and vaporizing it without mechanical contact. There is no rotating bit or carbide teeth to wear out. The company defines the process as non-contact rock ablation and that’s where the advantage lies. The deeper you go, the hotter and harder the rock becomes; This is precisely where traditional drilling begins to fail.According to Quaise’s July update, the company drilled more than 100 meters of granite at a test site in central Texas and is now approaching 1 kilometer deep at the same location, qualifying as the deepest feat achieved using non-contact drilling. The jump from there to over 5km in Oregon is substantial, and the company recognizes this in its schedule.

Why a superhot rock?

Traditional geothermal energy works with hot water or steam at moderate temperatures, near volcanoes or geological faults. The thesis of superhot geothermal energy is different: go down to where the rock exceeds 374 ° C and the water reaches a supercritical state, which carries much more energy per kilogram than normal steam. Therefore, a single superhot well can produce several times what a conventional geothermal well produces. Quaise targets are found in rocks at temperatures between 300°C and 500°C and at depths exceeding 5 km in most parts of the world.What makes Oregon special is the gradient. According to ThinkGeoEnergy, the area leased by Quaise is located south of the Newberry Volcano, right next to the boundary of the Newberry National Volcanic Monument. It spans 1,334 acres within the Deschutes National Forest and features a geothermal gradient of approximately 100°C per kilometer. In other words, temperatures that would require 10 kilometers of drilling elsewhere are found there at a fraction of the depth. Target reservoirs for Phase I are described at 315°C and 365°C.The plan released in April describes two sets of wells, each with one injector and two producers, and two generating units connected side by side. Phase I is planned to deliver 50 MW and power is expected to be available on the grid by 2030; Phase II targets 250 MW, with the company looking at gigawatt scale in the long term. For now, initial wells use conventional drilling to penetrate the surface layer; The gyrotron will only come into play when the target is the hottest basement rock at 365°C, as Quaise explained to the publication.For Brazil, the interesting development is the entry of Nabors. The drilling company operates rigs in several markets, and the combination of a conventional rig for the shallow end with a gyrotron for the hot section is a model that could operate in any sedimentary basin with a favorable slope, without depending on a volcano. The country barely explores geothermal energy, in part because there is little hot rock near the surface. If the technology proves successful, depth will no longer be an obstacle and what will matter is having the platform, team and regulations in place.Anthony Petrello, president and CEO of Nabors, summarized the logic of the statement by saying that millimeter wave technology changes the equation by reaching superhot rocks at depths beyond the reach of conventional methods. Carlos Araque, CEO and President of Quaise, spoke about unlocking the world’s most powerful source of clean energy.

A previous experiment

A discussion of deep drilling inevitably refers to the Kola Superdeep well in Russia. Soviet scientists started in 1970 and reached 12,262 meters in 1989, making it the deepest hole ever drilled, with only a diameter of 23 centimeters. What stopped progress was not the rock, but the heat. Bottom temperatures exceeded 180°C, well above what the models predicted. Under these conditions, the rock behaved more like plastic than solid. The project was abandoned in 1994 due to lack of funds and drill bits capable of withstanding the conditions.It’s clear why the idea of ​​vaporizing rock rather than scraping it is generating so much interest. It took Kola almost two decades to travel 12 kilometers on still relatively cold rock. Quaise aims to work on rocks three times hotter, arguing that millimeter waves are not affected by the hardness or temperature of the target. It’s a bold promise, and the company still needs to prove that the beam remains stable and efficient well beyond the Texas tests.