RELATED APPLICATION
The present application claims priority to U.S. Provisional Application No. 62/422,539, filed on Nov. 15, 2017, and incorporates that application in its entirety.
FIELD
The present invention relates to tunneling, and more particularly to using plasma for tunneling underground.
BACKGROUND
America is losing in the battle to lead the Clean Power Revolution, which is the largest shift of wealth the world has ever seen. Earth's largest industry, the energy industry, is shifting inexorably from coal/oil to solar/wind—just like previous centuries that ushered in similar transitions: from wood, whale oil and horses to coal, kerosene, and oil. The transition is inevitable, but America is losing—badly. Electricity costs are rising steadily, and oil and natural gas are unpredictable and generally increasing over time. Climate change damage to the economy is rising even faster, and common sense tells us that fossil fuels exacerbate climate change
Renewable energy is now equal to or less than the cost of fossil fuel generated electricity. Electricity to fuel vehicles is cheaper than gas even if gas were less than $1.00 per gallon. Wind and solar are booming, adding tens of billions of dollars per year of newly installed projects at a 30%+ average compound annual growth rate. Studies show significant benefits to the US economy of clean power, including new jobs (wind turbine technician was the fastest growing job in the USA in 2015), efficiency gains, reduced health costs due to cleaner water and air and reduction of the rapidly increasing costs to the economy of climate change.
Wind & solar power plants now provide electricity that's cheaper than new or existing fossil fuels power plants. However, much of this potential clean, affordable resource remains unavailable to most people due to the lack of suitable transmission lines. Building the infrastructure to transmit and store this power is slow.
Existing tunnel boring machines are slow and expensive. Bertha is one of the world's largest tunnel boring machines. The speed of Bertha is about 10 m per day. It is also huge, at 17.5 m wide and nearly 100 m long, requiring assembly at each job site and then disassembly to move it to the next location, as well as needing large slurry pipes and a 2.7 km long conveyor belt to move soil out of the way by injecting water and chemicals in the broken soil until it runs into a soft paste slurry. Furthermore, such tunnel boring machines are expensive to operate. Bertha uses 18.6 MW of power and 25 people to keep it operating. The design for Bertha originated in 1825 by inventor Marc Isambard Brunel. Bertha stalled in December 2013 and required substantial repairs, delaying a tunnel project in Seattle Wash. by about 3 years.
DETAILED DESCRIPTION
The present application describes a rapid burrowing robot (RBR) that can dig tunnels using ultra high temperature rotating plasma torches. In one embodiment, the RBR can be used for placement of new high voltage transmission cables 10 to 55 times faster at 20% of the cost of conventional tunneling. New transmission lines networked into a new Energy Superhighway—or a Super-grid—can be installed quickly by the RBR deep underground where it won't bother people, and can move cheap, clean wind energy from the Great Plains and solar power from the desert Southwest. Being able to easily bring renewable energy to our biggest cities where it's needed will increase renewable energy use, and decrease its cost. The RBR gasifies and/or melts rocks underground to create a sealed tunnel. In one embodiment, the sealed tunnel can act as an airtight tube to store compressed air, as a battery. Moving away from coal, gas and oil to cheaper, more predictable wind, solar and other clean power sources means lower energy bills for consumers and businesses, cleaner air, cleaner water, and a reduction of CO2 induced climate change.
The RBR uses innovative plasma and robotic technologies to tunnel quickly underground through rock and soil. The RBR primarily does this without mechanical drilling, or with reduced mechanical drilling. Using the RBR, it is possible to build subterranean tunnels which can then be lined with super high voltage transmission lines. In one embodiment, those tunnels could form a self-healing neural network of smart grid transmission lines that would be nearly impervious to vandalism, terrorist attacks or natural disasters, hardening and backing up our existing electrical and power system. In one embodiment, the tunnels could also double as batteries to store vast quantities of clean renewable energy, smoothing out availability. All this could be done without the need to spend decades to get the permits needed for dozens of new overhead transmission lines, at tunneling speeds many times faster than conventional boring drill rigs and at a fraction of the cost. Furthermore, by moving such lines underground, the potential damage and risk from adverse weather events and third-party attack is reduced.
A series of plasma torches operating at very high temperatures of up to 28,000° C. are arranged in a circular design. In one embodiment, a rotating torch element 210 includes the torches, their support structure, and a shaft. In one embodiment, the torches are non-transferable plasma torches which do not touch the material to be gasified, but rather complete the circuit between the cathode and anode of the torch, and use compressed air to provide a larger plume size. In one embodiment, the torches are transferable plasma torches which use a clamp attached to the material to be gasified. In one embodiment, the plasma torches are cooled using water or another coolant, circulating through the system.