A tracer test was recently initiated at the Steamboat Hills, Nevada, geothermal system in order to test the performance of the candidate tracer 1,5-naphthalene disulfonate and to evaluate the flow patterns of fluids entering the reservoir through a recently drilled slim hole injector. The tracer fluorescein was used as a companion dye to 1,5-naphthalene disulfonate. Early returns indicate comparable performance for the two tracers with both appearing to behave conservatively. The Arrhenius first-order thermal decay rate of 1,5-naphthalene disulfonate was determined over the temperature range of 310-330 oC using a batch autoclave reactor under conditions that simulate a hydrothermal environment. The tracer was found to be remarkably stable with only 20% decay measured after one week in the autoclave at 330oC. The long linear tailing portion of return curves from a tracer test initiated in 1992 indicates the effective fluid volume at Steamboat Hills to be on the order of 30 million m3 (8 billion gal). The natural recharge rate was estimated to be about 300 kg/sec (5000 gal/min).

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

Copyright 1999, 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.