Role of Fluid Pressure in the Production Behavior of Enhanced Geothermal Systems with CO2 as Working Fluid
- Key words
- Enhanced Geothermal Systems; heat transmission, CO2, storage, numerical simulation
- Conference
- Geothermal Resources Council Transactions
- Year
- 2007
- Session
- HDR/EGS; Carbon dioxide; Working fluids; Supercritical fluid
- Language
- English
Abstract
Numerical simulation is used to evaluate mass flow and heat extraction rates from enhanced geothermal injectionproduction systems that are operated using either CO2 or water as heat transmission fluid. For a model system patterned after the European hot dry rock experiment at Soultz, we find significantly greater heat extraction rates for CO2 as compared to water. The strong dependence of CO2 mobility (= density/viscosity) upon temperature and pressure may lead to unusual production behavior, where heat extraction rates can actually increase for a time, even as the reservoir is subject to thermal depletion.
Copyright 2007, 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.