A Testbed For A New-Generation Geothermal Simulator

Abstract

This paper describes a testbed code (TGNS) for a new-generation geothermal simulator. This is a fully operational simulation code which contains most of the functionality of TOUGH2 but is designed to explore new ideas and test new capabilities for a future, more complete simulator. Here, the background to the code and some of its features are described. Amongst others, TGNS can use different thermodynamic formulations, invoke a non-Darcy flow law and uses a simple unformatted input file. A number of validation problems are presented which show that TGNS and TOUGH2 produce similar results for a number of 1-D and 2-D problems. Also, some of the new capabilities of TGNS, including non-Darcy flow modelling and the use of continuous and time-dependent permeabilities are presented.