How to heat our homes with coal from abandoned mines

Clean energy from coal mines is something that is very important, and businesses like ours have a large part to play in that. The northeast of England, in particular, has a lot of industrial space, which is over a flooded mind.

People seem to be really enthused about the possibility of something arising from the past they helped to build.

Internationally, coal remains the single largest source of CO2 emissions and wealth, but while coal is still king in the UK, the situation is beginning to change.

What happens when the coal mines that once powered ours are no longer used given that coal production has decreased by 94% in the last 10 years?

What happens then when the coal mines that once provided our cities' energy are no longer in operation.

We are in the industrial North, which is as far northeast as you can get, and coal mining was absolutely necessary. This is at the location of the Dawden colliery, which shut down in 1991. When the mines were open, the pumps were turned off, and water resurfaced and flowed through the infrastructure of the mines. One characteristic of the water in that coal mining infrastructure is that it has been geothermally heated by the rocks nearby. The mines served as one of the area's primary sources of employment during its time. But what we've done here is use the water that rises to the surface here, which is about 20 degrees, as the primary source of heating for the offices and the working areas within the rhyme water treatment scheme. There are some minor variations, but this is generally how it works: a disused mine floods with groundwater, and the natural heat of the Rocks warms this water to about 20 degrees C. The water is then pumped to the surface and used to heat the offices and the working areas. where the heat is removed and moved to a different Circuit of

water that may heat structures such as dwellings

One business that has done this is Lanchester Wines. Adam, great to meet you. This warehouse is really heated by the mine water that has been inundated underneath it, utilizing a heat pump system. One of the biggest expenses for our business is maintaining the temperature of our approximately one million square foot warehouse at an ambient level because there is a lot of it and it will be consumed in the coming months. Here is where everything happens A wonderful heat pump exists In 2012, we began the process of becoming carbon neutral.

We began with wind turbines, but quickly had to switch to heating, so it was really a matter of evaluating our options. We were fortunate to have this warehouse, but many of the warehouses in the northeast of England are overflooded mine workings. However, the flooded mine workings are only about 80 meters below this level. I wanted to know, though, what sort of driver motivated this because obviously it requires a lot of energy.

Since we want to attract clients because we are a carbon-neutral firm, we have made it part of the company's strategy. However, there are challenges when you're developing a new technology, so this has become an important component of the company's overall mission. It sounds very straightforward to pump the water out of the mines, remove the heat from it, and then put it back, but our largest issue is probably Oco, a pollutant in the mine water.

the UK is not the only country advancing this technology; the Netherlands is using its old mine water to heat and cool homes, offices, shops, and more; we're still on with that really the nice thing about um about a heat pump is that all the technology already exists; you can buy most of the components off the shelf; and this is just putting it together in a different way.

So I think it's quite amazing for everyone involved because I think not only are you repurposing something and possibly bringing economic regeneration and green jobs back to those areas that were associated with coal mining, but you're actually creating clean energy from the coal mines in the UK where we have over 30000 Old Mines now. Of course, not all of them can be used because there are different forms of mining and different geology around them.

I have high hopes for this technology over the next few years as the companies develop that can service these things and make it a little less of a sort of pioneering project and more like a normal heating system, but I think that will come because the resource is the UK has incredible potential because it's an enormous heat resource down under the ground and these flooded mines in most places are a problem you know they need dealing with anyway coal anymore, so we might not be finished with them just yet.