Abstract
To accelerate the development of geothermal energy, operators have been searching for alternative options to reduce the overall cost, and increasing efforts are made to extract geothermal energy from oil fields. In return, geothermal production from oil fields could also benefit the oil field by offsetting the operation cost, reducing CO2 emission, and extending the economic life of the wells. This work is motivated to seek an alternative method of oil field geothermal power generation, which could enable aging oil wells to produce electric power with no further footprint on the surface by using thermoelectric technology. Geothermal energy stored in hydrocarbon reservoirs is enormous but the energy quality is poor because of relatively low temperature. To harvest the thermal energy in hydrocarbon reservoirs, innovative designs of wells and in situ thermoelectric technology for converting thermal energy to power are needed. Developing geothermal energy from the abandoned reservoir using existing wells presents many advantages and challenges simultaneously. The main advantages include existing infrastructure and well-characterized reservoirs. Therefore, harnessing geothermal energy from oil wells reduces capital expenditure and operational risks. However, there still exist challenges for the large-scale development from oil fields under current technology. The wells need to be retrofitted with designs to accommodate the temperature difference, generating the current through a thermoelectric generator (TEG). This chapter will introduce the number of thermal energies in oil fields and the current development status for this kind of geothermal resource. Then the mechanism of TEG technology and material selection protocols are discussed with well designs and configurations of TEG for vertical and horizontal wells. The thermal recovery efficiency is modeled using finite difference methods, and the simulation results are presented.
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