The Iceland Deep Drilling Project (IDDP) is a long-term program by an Icelandic energy consortium to improve the economics of geothermal energy by producing supercritical hydrous fluids. A two year-long feasibility study was completed in June 2003 and in November of the same year a decision was reached to proceed, and to seek international funding for deep drilling from both the energy industry and from science foundations. Drilling of the first deep drillhole will begin early in 2005 in the Reykjanes high-temperature geothermal field, at a strategic site where the Mid-Atlantic Ridge emerges from the ocean. A 2.7 km deep well will be drilled, completed by a 12 º" rotary bit and left barefoot for flow testing. Funding for casing of the well, in summer 2006, and then rotary drilling from 2.7 km to 4.0 km and subsequent flow testing, is being sought from the industry and international funding agencies. We plan to take several spot cores in this depth interval. After evaluation of the technical and scientific results from the 4.0 km deep well, we plan to deepen the well to 5 km by core drilling into a supercritical geothermal reservoir and carry out a third flow test from that depth.
The primary objective of IDDP is to find 450-600?C supercritical geothermal fluids at drillable depths, to study their physical and chemical nature and the feasibility and economics of using them as an energy source. Although drilling such deep wells will be expensive, modeling indicates that the power outputs from supercritical wells could be enhanced by a factor of 10 relative to the power production usual from high-temperature geothermal wells. This is because supercritical fluids have higher enthalpy than steam produced from two-phase systems and large changes in physical properties near the critical point can lead to extremely high flow rates. If this approach using such unconventional geothermal resources is an economic success the same approach could be applied in other high-temperature volcanic geothermal systems elsewhere, as an important step in enhancing the geothermal industry worldwide. The IDDP could serve as an ideal R&D platform for both a European and an international programme on sustainable energy from unconventional geothermal resources. This programme could integrate the generation of electric power, production of a clean energy carrier like hydrogen, possible production of chemicals in an environmentally sound way, and eco-tourism as part of the "Geopark" concept.

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