MAROKO133 Breaking ai: Startup to test closed-loop geothermal drilling in US to harness Ea

📌 MAROKO133 Eksklusif ai: Startup to test closed-loop geothermal drilling in US to

A Canadian geothermal company has just landed a USD 38 million investment to launch a new underground heat pump that doesn’t require drilling into hot rock, using water, or releasing emissions to produce energy.

Alberta-based geothermal power generation firm Rodatherm Energy Corporation secured the Series A investment from TDK Ventures, the corporate venture-capital subsidiary of TDK Corporation.

The funding will help the firm advance its innovative closed-loop geothermal system (AGS) technology, which promises to deliver affordable, long-term, sustainable energy.

The system is fully cased, pressurized, and optimized for sedimentary basins to enable conductive and convective heat transfer into the working fluid.

“This investment reflects TDK Ventures’ commitment to supporting transformative technologies that address critical global challenges, including the urgent need for clean and affordable energy,” Nicolas Sauvage, TDK Ventures president, stated.

Turning heat into power

In contrast to traditional geothermal plants that rely on drilling into hot rock and interacting directly with underground reservoirs, the firm’s patented AGS system is entirely closed-loop and fully cased.

Essentially a massive underground heat pump, the AGS is a modular, pressurized system that mimics the thermodynamics of surface heat pumps, but at a depth. It extracts the heat using a new working fluid that remains fully isolated from the ground.

This eliminates the need for fracking, steam, or groundwater extraction, while at the same time removing any risk of environmental contamination. Moreover, the system delivers 50 percent higher efficiency than conventional binary-cycle geothermal systems, using five times less fluid.

The system is optimized for sedimentary basins with high natural convection, which are areas that traditional geothermal approaches have largely overlooked. It additionally doesn’t use fresh water and has a small, energy-dense surface footprint.

Meanwhile, heat is transferred through conduction and convection into the isolated fluid, which is then routed directly into a turbine for power generation.

New geothermal systems

According to Rodatherm, the system can operate in almost any geological setting because it is fully sealed and pressurized. It is also engineered to run for decades with minimal maintenance.

The company will now use the funds to build its first pilot system in Utah. It aims to use the site to validate its system’s cost-efficiency, deploy it within CapEx and OpEx projections, and energy conversion performance.

Sauvage emphasized that geothermal energy is well-positioned to contribute significantly to near-term electricity generation. He believes Rodatherm’s closed-loop system has the potential to unlock reliable, clean power for millions.

Though an ambitious mission, Sauvage said he’s proud to help accelerate the transition to clean geothermal energy. “We are thrilled to have TDK Ventures join our valued group of investors,” he concluded in a press release.

Rodatherm’s USD 38 million Series A round is backed by TDK Ventures through its USD 150 million Fund EX1. It targets early-stage investments in energy transition, electrification, and decarbonization within the US and Europe.

“As the world strives to build a sustainable future for all, we must recognize the pivotal role that energy transformation needs to play in our collective efforts,” Noboru Saito, TDK Corporation president and SEO, elaborated in a statement.

🔗 Sumber: interestingengineering.com

📌 MAROKO133 Breaking ai: World’s earliest known mummies found in Southeast Asia, d

A team of researchers reporting in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has identified what they describe as the earliest known evidence of intentional human mummification. The study finds that hunter-gatherer groups across southern China and Southeast Asia practiced prolonged, low-temperature smoke-drying of corpses between roughly 12,000 and 4,000 years ago, with some remains at certain sites possibly dating back about 14,000 years.

Study scope and main findings

The researchers examined dozens of pre-Neolithic burials in which skeletons were placed in tightly crouched or squatting positions and, in many cases, showed patches of burning. The authors argue that those features, the intact, hyper-flexed skeletons and the absence of the disarticulation expected after ordinary decay, indicate bodies had been desiccated before burial rather than interred as fresh cadavers. 

Laboratory analyses cited in the paper, including X-ray diffraction and infrared spectroscopy, revealed molecular changes in bone consistent with exposure to heat at relatively low intensities, pointing to prolonged smoking rather than high-temperature burning or natural dry environments. 

According to the New Scientist, the oldest known mummified humans until now were around 7000 years old in northern Chile, and from 4500 years ago in Ancient Egypt. 

How the researchers reached that conclusion

To test whether heat treatment had occurred, the team applied mineralogical and spectroscopic techniques that can detect chemical changes caused by heating. Those tests returned signals that the bones experienced sustained, low-temperature heating, conditions the authors say would be produced by smoking a body over a low fire for weeks or months. 

As study author Hsiao-chun Hung told IFLScience, “Smoked mummification takes about three months, during which time the body is slowly and continuously heated over a low fire.” The paper and accompanying reporting link these findings to ethnographic practices recorded among groups such as the Dani of New Guinea, who historically and in some cases today smoke-dry relatives’ bodies as part of mortuary care. 

Context, significance and expert comment

If the interpretation holds, the study pushes documented artificial mummification back thousands of years before the Chinchorro mummies of South America and the embalming traditions of ancient Egypt. In the IFLScience report, Co-author Peter Bellwood described the results as consistent with a long-running regional mortuary tradition and suggested connections with early populations that populated Oceania. “We may be seeing the descendants of the first modern humans in Southeast Asia,” he said. 

The research has also drawn measured caution from outside specialists. According to Associated Press, Rita Peyroteo Stjerna, an independent human evolution expert, said “Dating methods used on the mummies could have been more robust,” and noted it remains unclear whether smoke-drying occurred consistently across all the examined sites. 

The study frames smoke-drying as a deliberate and technically demanding mortuary innovation among tropical hunter-gatherers. A practice that, according to the authors, sustained social and spiritual ties with ancestors across large distances and long timescales. The paper’s conclusions will now stand for further testing through additional dating, sampling and comparative analyses as researchers seek to map how widespread and continuous the tradition truly was.

🔗 Sumber: interestingengineering.com