NUMERICAL EXPERIMENTS WITH COMPUTER MODELS OF GEYSERS

Abstract

Simple computer models of geysers have been set up that consist of a chamber linked to a cold recharge block and a deeper hot recharge block. The chamber also has an outlet to the surface through a narrow channel. The TOUGH2 simulator is used to carry out many numerical experiments to determine how parameters such as the size of chamber, cold recharge pressure, hot recharge pressure and permeability of the channel affect whether or not the model produces geysering behaviour and how they affect the period of the eruptions.
The aim is to produce a simple model of a geyser that can be embedded into a larger reservoir model of a system such as Rotorua and used to investigate the long-term variability of the behaviour of geysers.