Deep beneath the runways and terminal buildings at YYC Calgary Worldwide Airport is a possible vitality supply that Komaromi wished to judge for its potential to make the operations at one among Canada’s busiest airports extra environmentally sustainable.
For her capstone mission, Techno-Financial Feasibility Research for a Deep Geothermal System at The Calgary Worldwide Airport, she leveraged each her background in geology and an environmental co-op scholar placement at Calgary Airport Authority. Particularly, Komaromi took on a techno-economic feasibility research on the viability of a deep geothermal system for the airport to assist net-zero targets.
“The mission appealed to me as a result of it kinds a part of the group’s decarbonization roadmap and had potential for tangible influence in decision-making,” mentioned Komaromi, who earned an undergraduate diploma in geology at UCalgary. “Geothermal improvement in Alberta can be nonetheless very a lot in its infancy so analysis on this space has a little bit of that gold rush or oil growth really feel. It is all very thrilling.”
When most individuals consider Alberta and its vitality assets buried deep underground, it tends to be oil and pure gasoline deposits. However ample geothermal assets have the potential to assist tackle vitality demand and assist the transition to decrease carbon vitality provide.
Working together with her educational advisor and colleagues on the airport, Komaromi’s analysis centered on evaluating a geothermal state of affairs to the modelled business-as-usual forecast, and demonstrated a constructive influence on general vitality use, emissions, and vitality prices.
In her work, she utilized GEOPHIRES-X software program from the Nationwide Renewable Vitality Laboratory to simulate reservoir, wellbore, and floor plant efficiency to estimate vitality manufacturing and price for a closed-loop geothermal system (CLGS) for direct-use heating. Outcomes point out it’s each technically and economically possible.
“Geothermal know-how is advancing rapidly, and that is making implementation in these much less typical areas rather more possible,” she mentioned. “This mission opened my eyes to the large potential of geothermal improvement in Alberta and the thrilling know-how development going down. There’s a rising refrain of geothermal advocates in Alberta and Canada that I’m now part of.”
Komaromi intends to proceed to refine her analysis findings and apply the learnings from her SEDV grasp’s to contribute to Calgary’s pathway to net-zero and to advocate for geothermal in Alberta’s vitality transition. Her focus is to assist the federal government coverage, analysis, and demonstrations wanted to comprehend its potential, and he or she sees enormous potential for geothermal improvement in northern and western Alberta, historically oil and gasoline nation.
Komaromi’s analysis for her capstone mission has satisfied her of the alternatives with geothermal vitality and in a province famend for extracting subsurface assets. Issues are wanting up for one more vitality supply deep underground.
