Some Mismatches Occurred when Simulating Fractured Reservoirs as Homogeneous Porous Media

Abstract

The understanding of transport processes that occur in naturally fractured geothermal systems is far from being complete. Oilen, evaluation and numerical simulations of fractured geothermal reservoirs, are carried out by assuming equivalent porous media and homogeneous petrophysical properties withm big matrix blocks. The purpose of this paper, is to present a comparison between results obtained from numerical studies of a naturally fractured reservoir treated as a simple porous medium and the simulation of some real aspects of the fiactured reservoir. A general conclusion outlines the great practical importance of considering even approximately, the true nature of such systems. Our results show that the homogeneous simplified evaluation of the energy resource in a fractured system, could result in unrealistic estimates of the reservoir capacity to generate electricity.