Mon, 11 July, 2022
A new open-access paper has been published by the Geothermics journal and is now available to view online.
The paper, ‘A Peaceman-type well model for the 3D Control Volume Finite Element Method and numerical simulations of supercritical geothermal resource utilization,’ was co-authored by Alina Yapparova, Benoit Lamy-Chappuis, Samuel W. Scott, Thomas Driesner and is based on research funded by the GeoPro project and conducted by ETH Zurich and the University of Iceland.
The research investigated how supercritical geothermal resources could be utilised through the development of a tool able to simulate both the natural transient evolution of a supercritical resource near a magma intrusion and its response to possible operation schemes.
The solution used a CSMP++ simulation platform with a Peaceman-type well model able to simulate a supercritical resource’s response to direct production, injection or other operation schemes.
The well model was able to provide robust solutions of well pressures and rates as well as for supercritical conditions where water is highly compressible and, therefore, does not strictly fulfil the assumptions used in the derivation of the Peaceman model.
The research showed how the evolving patterns of temperature, enthalpy, density and flow rates provide some of the first insights into supercritical resource response to operation.
You can see the paper, in full, here:
https://authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S0375-6505(22)00161-4
The GeoPro Project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 851816.