Eden Receives $3.8M ARPA-E OPEN 2021 Award

Washington-based geoscience technology development company Eden announced that it has been selected to receive $3,796,672 in federal funding from the US Department of Energy Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) for a project titled “Electro-Hydraulic Fracturing of Enhanced Geothermal Systems.” 

“Successful stimulation of next-generation geothermal reservoirs will be necessary to improve heat transfer efficiency and drastically increase power generation,” said Paris Smalls, CEO and Co-founder of Eden, and Lead Principal Investigator (PI), ARPA-E OPEN 2021 award. “Current hydraulic fracturing techniques, which had tremendous success in the oil and gas industry, have been mostly unsuccessful in stimulating geothermal reservoirs due to the extreme pressure and temperature conditions downhole. We are developing a radically different approach to reservoir stimulation, which utilizes high-voltage electricity as the main mechanism to increase reservoir permeability. This technology complements recent innovations in geothermal reservoir drilling, since drilled wells will need to be successfully stimulated to achieve maximum net power output per well.”

The company’s ARPA-E OPEN 2021 award will be aided by top-notch researchers in the MIT Earth Resources Laboratory (MIT-ERL), MIT Civil and Environmental Engineering Department (MIT-CEE) MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center (MIT-PSFC), and Idaho National Laboratory (INL).

“In my home country of Saudi Arabia, continental rifting along the Red Sea has created volcanic “Harratsi” that are accessible for power grade geothermal energy production.,” said  Ammar Alali, Co-founder, Eden. “Our new stimulation technology has widespread implications to meet decarbonization goals in the United States as well as my home in the MENA region.”

Success in the development of this technology will be imperative for global renewable electrification efforts and 2050 net-zero decarbonization goals.