Meet Marco Quilico

Elizabeth A. Thomson Correspondent

Marco Quilico is proud of the progress Quaise Energy has made toward its ultimate goal of giving the world access to the plentiful, clean geothermal energy deep beneath our feet.

Since the company’s founding eight years ago, it has successfully conducted several increasingly more difficult demonstrations of its breakthrough drilling technology. That technology, which is based on years of research at MIT, involves using millimeter wave energy (cousins to the microwaves we cook with) to literally melt and vaporize rock.

“We went from making a tiny melt pool in what was essentially a paving stone only two inches thick to drilling a record 118 meters down into a granite quarry in Texas,” says Quilico, the company’s project manager. 

“Lately it’s almost like we’re hitting milestones every six months that we never thought would be possible. We always had the dream, but seeing it happen is really exciting.”

Quilico leads the team behind the design of the equipment that takes the power from the gyrotron that produces it to the rock. “We’re also developing the actual methods that we use to drill the rock, so how much power we apply for how long, and what type of purge gas we need” to carry the vaporized rock to the surface.

His guiding mantra is to develop “high-value systems that are also efficient and relatively simple to use.”

Originally from Honduras, Quilico completed a six-year program to earn a master’s degree in industrial engineering from the Universidad de Navarra in Spain. From there he took a job at Schlumberger, a firm that solves problems for the oil industry. Over his tenure of over eight years, he led the development and commercialization of the company’s Geoguard High-Performance Deepwater Balance-line Safety Valve. Geoguard is the company’s first such system that can be deployed at any depth, temperature, and pressure without needing recalibration. It also costs about a third as much as its predecessor.

A few weeks after bringing Geoguard to commercialization, Quilico was recruited to Quaise.  He’s been with the company for five years. “Geothermal has the capacity to deliver high amounts of energy 24/7 with low carbon emissions. So it seemed to be a no-brainer to work on this, and I’m proud to be working on it with Quaise.”