Students from the University of Oklahoma took home first place and $10,000 in prize funding as part of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) 2022 Geothermal Collegiate Competition, an annual event that prepares students to lead the next generation of geothermal energy development.

[See also: DOE launches 2022 Geothermal Collegiate Competition]

The first-place team proposed and designed a system to repurpose six abandoned oil and gas wells in Shawnee, Oklahoma, to provide renewable geothermal energy for more than 730,449 sq ft of educational and municipal buildings, including sites within the Absentee Shawnee Tribe and Potawatomi Nation jurisdiction. Tapping into retired oil wells was the foundation of the plan that reduces drilling costs to feasibly power different facilities.

Second place and $5,000 were awarded to the University of North Dakota and Reykjavik University, Iceland, for the design of a combined heat and power geothermal system for the city of New Town, North Dakota. The student engineers relied on extensive, pre-existing geological information from oil and gas exploration in the area to design a system that could heat and power an entire district, including potential for greenhouses and aquaculture efforts.

The design of a geothermal ground source heat pump for a local non-profit earned the University of Colorado-Boulder team third place and $2,500 in prize funding. The system is engineered to offset natural gas emissions from the organization’s existing furnace and to provide wintertime heating as well as summertime cooling.

The DOE Geothermal Collegiate Competition invites participation by teams of at least three students enrolled in accredited U.S.-based collegiate institutions or U.S. citizens enrolled at non-U.S. based collegiate institutions.