Mapping Geothermal Resources: A Minimally Invasive Procedure

Abstract

Understanding the location and extent of groundwater resources is very important to the geothermal industry for obvious reasons. It is critical to have a cost-effective method of understanding where concentrations of geothermal water are located as well as the preferential flow paths of the water in the subsurface. Such information can assist companies to optimize the location of production and injection wells among other things.

AquaTrackô is a patented, geophysical magnetic-based groundwater mapping solution, from Willowstick TechnologiesÆ, LLC that has proven successful in the geothermal industry to better characterize groundwater conditions and flow patterns. AquaTrack's technical name is Controlled Source-Frequency Domain Magnetics (CS-FDM) and will be referred to as such hereafter in this paper.

This paper presents a geothermal case history using a relatively new but proven technology that can accurately map groundwater at significant depths (up to 1,000 meters) over large areas (square kilometers) in short periods of time (weeks).A description of how the technology works and a review of a case study will be presented. This paper will focus on how a geothermal company used the AquaTrack technology to gain insightful understanding of groundwater flow.