Title:

Enhanced Geothermal Reservoirs with Two Fluid Cavities and Unequal Solid and Fluid Temperatures

Authors:

Rachel GELET, Benjamin LORET, Nasser KHALILI

Key Words:

local thermal non equilibrium, thermo-hydro-mechanical couplings; thermal stress; double porosity

Conference:

Stanford Geothermal Workshop

Year:

2015

Session:

Enhanced Geothermal Systems

Language:

English

Paper Number:

Gelet

File Size:

964 KB

View File:

Abstract:

Enhancement of geothermal reservoirs aims at improving their permeability, mostly by re-opening pre-existing fractures but also by highlighting a more continuous crack network . The high fluid velocity (0.2\,m/s) reported after hydraulic fracturation at Soultz-sous-Forêts, France, suggests that the standard assumption of local thermal equilibrium, namely solid, pore and fracture fluids at equal temperature, may be questioned. Emphasis is laid a) on the mass exchanges between the pore system and the fracture network, which are endowed each with their own pressure, and mainly b) on the energy exchanges between the rock, the pore network and the fracture network, which are endowed each with their own temperature. Thermo-hydro-mechanical (THM) constitutive equations and generalized diffusion and transfer constitutive relations are developed in a comprehensive, coupled and unified framework, assuming a deformable rock formation. Particular attention is laid on both mass and energy exchanges between the cavities which are controlled by the out-of-balances of the chemical potentials and by the out-of-balances of the coldnesses, respectively. The model is applied to simulate circulation tests using a domestic finite element code. The parameters are calibrated from the thermal outputs of the Fenton Hill and Rosemanowes reservoirs. At variance with a double porosity model with Local Thermal Equilibrium (LTE), the Local thermal Non Equilibrium model (LTNE) displays the characteristic two step time profile that is reported for these two reservoirs. In agreement with field data, fluid loss is observed to be high initially and decreases with time. A sensitivity analysis is performed to determine the influences of the internal length scales, namely fracture spacing and crack aperture, in the complete framework of the dual porosity (2 pressures 2P) and local thermal non equilibrium (3 temperatures 3T) . The fine description of the effective stress, pore and fracture pressures, and solid, pore and fracture temperatures of the most general format (2P-3T) is essentially unchanged when the model is specialized to (2P-2T) with equal pore and solid temperatures. At variance, the quality of the description is degraded for the (1P-2T) model that omits the permeability contribution of the pores, and for the (1P-1T) standard single porosity LTE model. The progressive transition is quantified during circulation tests at Fenton Hill HDR. Gelet R.M., Loret B. and Khalili N. (2012)a. Thermal recovery from a fractured medium in local thermal non-equilibrium. International Journal for Numerical and Analytical Methods in Geomechanics. 37(15): 2471-2501. Gelet R.M., Loret B. and Khalili N. (2012)b. A thermo-hydro-mechanical coupled model in local thermal non-equilibrium for fractured HDR reservoir with double porosity. Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth 117 (B7): 65-76.


ec2-3-142-98-108.us-east-2.compute.amazonaws.com, you have accessed 0 records today.

Press the Back button in your browser, or search again.

Copyright 2015, Stanford Geothermal Program: Readers who download papers from this site should honor the copyright of the original authors and may not copy or distribute the work further without the permission of the original publisher.


Attend the nwxt Stanford Geothermal Workshop, click here for details.

Accessed by: ec2-3-142-98-108.us-east-2.compute.amazonaws.com (3.142.98.108)
Accessed: Wednesday 24th of April 2024 02:08:34 AM