What are the limitations of geothermal power?
"Corrosion" means hot water or steam erodes well casings, pipelines or metal on the generators, especially for acid hot water and acid steam.
For extracting a large amount of vapor underground, if the foundation of geothermal is not stable, geological disasters such as subsidence will happen. The best way to prevent subsidence from happening for the time being is to inject used hot water back into the ground. But it should be noticed that re-injected water may lower down the temperature of geothermal and increase the pressure of underground water, so that some impure liquid may flow in to the geothermal layer and influence the quality of steam.
Geothermal well drilling is a necessary procedure to develop geothermal power, but it may damage the nature landscape. Therefore, how to match with landscape and ecology should be considered.
Because it generates power by steam, hot water should be vaporized first and then leaded to the generator. The residual hot water is about 3~5 times of vapor in weight, including boron, arsenic, and so on, should be appropriately disposed, or the ground water will be polluted. In addition, geothermal vapor includes carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulfide, but after processed the pollution can be significantly reduced. Compared with waste hot water, the impact of waste gas is not so serious.
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