During the development of enhanced geothermal reservoir (EGS), production efficiency may be significantly affected by the heterogeneity of fracture conductivity. To avoid any dominant flow path that may “short-circuit” the fluid flow between the injector and producer, we presented the idea of autonomous tunable fracture conductivity and explored its potential benefits in the production. The presented technique can provide high hydraulic conductivity in fractures when the surrounding temperature is high and vice versa low conductivity at low temperatures. Results show that utilizing this technique could prevent an early appearance of dominant flow path between injector and producer in an EGS. By applying this technique, the overall output thermal power after 50 years of production can be increased by over 70 %, which is considerable for the EGS production. Since other flow-control systems are mainly focused on the wellbore and near-wellbore areas, this technique can provide a more effective enhancement in heat extraction by controlling flow deep inside the reservoir.

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

Copyright 2023, 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.