Thermal Fluid Characteristics of Geothermal Prospects in the North Central Vietnam and Their Potential for Power Generation

Abstract

There are 30 geothermal sources in the North Central Vietnam but we have selected nine most potential ones for calculation of reservoir temperature using geochemical methods. The results showed that these geothermal resources have relatively high temperatures at the reservoirs. This means the application of binary cycle technology for electric generation is very suitable. These geothermal reservoir's temperatures are used to calculate the electric generating capacity. However, to calculate the power generation capacity, the parameters such as: the area of the reservoir, the thickness of the reservoir and some others are estimated or referenced from the published literatures. According to the results of calculation, the total capacity of electric generation from these geothermal resources is 115MWe. However, the development of geothermal energy still has a lot of barriers such as the initial investment cost or the lack of geothermal specialist, knowledge and experience. Hopefully these problems are solved by time and the geothermal energy will be developed in Vietnam in the near future.