The Carbon Dioxide Behavior of the Kizildere Geothermal Field

Abstract

The Kizildere Geothermal Field is located in Western Anatolia in the Agean region close to the town of Denizli. It sits on the Buyuk Menderes Graben where most of Turkey’s power producing geothermal activity is. Power production in the Kızıldere field has started in 1984 with an installed capacity of 20 MWe, however, over the past ten years, there has been a significant increase which has led to a current installed capacity of 260 MWe through 4 separate power plants. There are two factors that provide assistance in production. The first is the carbon dioxide in the produced geothermal fluid. The carbon dioxide acts to provide higher wellhead flowing pressures because of the high partial pressure of carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide content of the Kizildere Geothermal Field varies depending on the depths of the production wells where an increase with depth is observed. The other factor that aids production is the reinjection operations carried out in the field. The role of reinjection is basically to maintain the pressure of the reservoir. It has been observed that the carbon dioxide content of the Kızıldere reservoir has been decreasing considerably due to the reinjection operations. In this study we provide an analysis of the decline trend of the carbon dioxide content in the Kızıldere geothermal Field. The study first considers the overall performance of the carbon dioxide behavior in the field. Then the behavior is analyzed this time considering the locations of the production and reinjection wells. Results show that the carbon dioxide content of the reservoir will continue to decline based on the reinjection ratio.