Chapter 321: Chapter 319 Planning and Plans (Second Update)
Chen Xin plans to build an Energy Tower, using it as the core to provide heating and electricity to a city.
Without the system’s presence, this would certainly be a beautiful idea. Although it’s theoretically technically feasible, actually building such an Energy Tower would be an impossible task.
First, drilling a deep pit that reaches deep strata is a massive construction endeavor. Although modern drilling technology can drill wells several kilometers deep, such wells lack the value of being used as the foundation for an Energy Tower.
Taking Lucia’s highly-touted Kola Deep Well in Sovia as an example, many people online boast that this well was drilled directly into Hell, and from it many monsters have flown out, earning the title "Gate of Hell." Years ago, Sovia even planned to drill through Blue Star...
However, upon truly looking up the information, one would find that the so-called "Gate of Hell" is 12,262 meters deep, with an upper diameter of 92 cm and a lower diameter of 21.5 cm. With such a diameter, even lowering a person in would be quite difficult.
The truth is that the so-called deep wells on Earth are not the gigantic tunnels people imagine, but tiny holes that only a drill bit and rod can go down—petroleum drilling is the same.
As for wells that can accommodate several people, appear thick, and are simultaneously very deep, there certainly are such wells. The world’s deepest mine shaft is over 4,000 meters deep, but it’s the result of more than a century of continual downward digging. It’s not one deep well reaching the bottom directly, but multiple excavation planes, with the so-called over 4,000 meters being the deepest section at the bottom of the mine.
Here, the environment is extremely hostile, and temperatures can reach 57℃, surpassing the limits of human tolerance.
Of course, this also indirectly proves the feasibility of drilling deep wells to the deep strata to utilize geothermal energy.
In Chen Xin’s conception, the structure of the Energy Tower should be to drill two deep wells over 3,000 meters underground, with their bottoms connected. One well is responsible for blowing air downwards, and the other for extracting air upwards, using air to tap into deep geothermal energy.
The ground part would actually be equivalent to a gigantic blower and thermal converter, to blow air into the deep well depths, extract geothermal energy, and convert the extracted thermal energy into electricity or directly send it to needed areas.
Moreover, Chen Xin does not intend to take the bold approach of directly discharging into the air. Instead, he plans to use the current underground transport network to lay heating pipes and distribute thermal energy throughout the city.
This way, the overall temperature of the city could be raised, and given that many shelters are not located very deep underground, with their temperature rising, the excess heat could diffuse through the base to the surface, indirectly raising the surface temperature.
Certainly, if it’s truly necessary to create a heating field on the surface, connecting a radiator with pipes to the surface could create a warming zone.
This is somewhat akin to radiators or stoves in games, allowing a manually created small heating area. Even though the heating efficiency might be negatively impacted by environmental factors, raising the temperature from -50℃ to -30℃ still holds practical significance!
Whether it’s ground construction, opening surface greenhouses, or other uses, it all presents high practical values.
Not to mention, with Chen Xin’s improvements, this kind of radiator-made small heating field would definitely not only raise the temperature by a mere 20 degrees.
If this idea could indeed be realized, as long as the Energy Tower and radiators are efficient enough, humanity could truly return to surface living.
In the future, even if surface temperatures remain low, once sunlight returns, with the Energy Tower and radiators allowing humanity back to the surface—not confined to underground shelters—it presents a fundamentally different meaning for human civilization.
However, it’s not difficult to construct radiators for small heating fields, but it’s not easy to build an Energy Tower capable of providing thermal energy to a city.
This involves knowledge from engineering, thermodynamics, material science, and architectural mechanics—not something one person can handle alone.
Even if Chen Xin can skip many steps by system upgrades, if it can’t be replicated elsewhere relying solely on Chen Xin’s system upgrade, its practical significance remains limited.
After all, Chen Xin is but one person, constructing such an Energy Tower requires a substantial amount of survival points. To build such towers in all cities or most cities in Flame Country, the survival points and time required would be too much for Chen Xin. It’s even questionable whether he could achieve this in his lifetime.
Therefore, the best solution remains the same: Chen Xin constructs a finished Energy Tower and then hands it over to the nation to reverse engineer, allowing replication elsewhere without relying on Chen Xin. Only with national support can Energy Towers be erected in most cities nationwide, achieving the goal of returning humanity from underground to the surface.
However, building an Energy Tower is evidently a very troublesome and complicated matter. After all, Chen Xin’s ability is merely upgrading, not creating out of nothing. He must have a foundation that can be regarded as an Energy Tower to upgrade it into a genuine Energy Tower.
This is the system’s usage rule—he’d still need to weld a frame even if he merely intended to burn coal inside it, claiming it’s an Energy Tower.
Thus, this matter can’t be quickly resolved or produce results, so Chen Xin decides not to think about it for now. This sort of long-term commitment that’s only evident with time doesn’t need to be hurriedly started—better to first focus on what can be done now.
"The battery production line is almost installed. After an upgrade, it should be usable." Chen Xin, lying in the bathtub, counts on his fingers the tasks he’s completed or is completing, planning upcoming tasks: "Once the battery production line begins operation, a generator production line could be considered. This would provide sufficient energy. The remaining matters include building a large surface greenhouse and the Energy Tower—these two might proceed together..."
Chen Xin thinks about his previous plan to construct a large planting greenhouse on the surface, pondering that it could be related to the Energy Tower plan, as the Energy Tower’s primary function is heating, which is exactly what a planting greenhouse requires on a large scale.