Rosemanowes Quarry
Rosemanowes Quarry, near Penryn, Cornwall, England, was a granite quarry and the site of an early experiment in extracting geothermal energy from the earth using hot dry rock technology.
Quarry
In the nineteenth century the quarry provided stone for building projects in Britain and abroad as well as for the Ponsanooth viaduct near Penryn and the Carnon Valley viaduct between Truro and Falmouth.Geothermal energy research project
The site was chosen as the research site because the granite in the area has the highest heat flow in England. The trials began in 1977 in the wake of the 1973 oil crisis and an earlier trial in the United States at Fenton Hill. The trials at Rosemanowes concluded in 1980, although studies continued until 1991. Funding for the initial project was provided by the Department of Energy and by the European Commission. The research facilities and staff transferred to Camborne School of Mines Associates Limited in 1992, the trading arm of the Camborne School of Mines.The project had two aims
- To see if hot dry rocks could be fractured by water pressure alone, enabling a current of cold water from an inlet borehole to pass easily through the mass and to be collected at an outlet borehole some distance away. The trial proved to be successful, and showed that explosives were not required to fracture this Cornish hot granite at depth.
- To find out if the rocks were hot enough to make steam for a turbine to generate electricity. This second aim was not achieved at the depths attained. Though the rocks did yield substantial quantities of hot water, to reach a temperature to generate steam hot enough to drive a turbine would have required drilling a further kilometre or more into the granite, an option which was too expensive to pursue at that time.
[Image:RosemanowesQuarry-Sign.jpg|thumb|Sign to Rosemanowes Quarry]
[Image:RosemanowesQuarry-Winches.jpg|thumb|left|Winches]
[Image:RosemanowesQuarry-TowerWheels.jpg|thumb|Tower wheels]
In 2006, the site was acquired by 3K Facilities. The company now offers deep borehole test facilities in one of the best-logged sites in the world. All the deep boreholes are now available to hire for a range of down hole testing. There are three deep boreholes, four uncased holes and one hole inclined at 30degrees, as well as micro seismic testing and a wind turbine test environment on this site.
Although the energy has not yet been exploited commercially, the data provided by the tests has been widely used to test numerical simulation codes. The dataset contributed significantly to the geothermal power plant built with European Union sponsorship at Soultz-sous-Forêts.
In March 2013, the quarry was put up for sale by the owners 3K Facilities.