Solids Control for High Salinity Geothermal Brines
- Key words
- Power plants; Injection; Reinjection; Salton Sea; Imperial Valley; California; USA
- Location
- Imperial Valley; Salton Sea, California
- Conference
- Geothermal Resources Council Transactions
- Year
- 1977
- Session
- Power plant design and operation; Brine chemistry
- Language
- English
Abstract
Solids which precipitate when high salinity geothermal brines are cooled can cause extensive erosion and plugging to occur in power plant components. During reinjection of spent brine, they ma also cause plugging of the formation adjacent to the reinjection wells. This report describes work done to characterize these solids and control their production by acidifying the brine to a pH <4.5. At this time, control by acidification seems to offer an attractive alternative to conventional methods (filtering, settling, etc.) for removing suspended solids from spent brine prior to reinjection.
Copyright 1977, Geothermal Resources Council. Readers who download papers from this site should honour the copyright of the original authors, and may not copy or distribute the work further without the permission of the original publisher.