Abstract
Geothermal energy is an important potential and a strategic area for developing activities regarding renewable energy and future studies. It involves a great potential and a main role in the worldwide energy sector, particularly electricity generation. Nevertheless, the role of geothermal electricity in today’s world is not dominant in comparison to other renewable energy sources like solar PV and wind power.Though Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) greatly includes the potential for power generation, the EGS technology feasibility should be further studied. Numerous studies exist to investigate the energy production feasibility (heat and electricity) from such resources focusing on drilling processes. Today, the geothermal projects are mainly focused on completion operations and drilling research area, in which it is possible to reduce the costs considerably by suitable design.To drill a geothermal well, the drilling operations are quite similar to the petroleum industry. Though, the different aspects of geothermal drilling will make it more challenging and complex than the oil and gas well drilling. The type of resource and the formation type of resource is the big differences. Normally, fissures and fractured hard volcanic rocks contain geothermal resources, however, porous media of sedimentary formations comprises oil and gas resourses. Petroleum and geothermal well drilling have different geological and physical features including rock types, reservoir pressure, temperature, well and casing design as well as the well completion program. Hence, in this paper, it is tried to present the most common issues in geothermal well drilling operations and to introduce the potential for the future research areas.
Highlights
Faculty of Science and Technology, Department of Energy and Petroleum Engineering, University of Stavanger, Stavanger, Norway article info
Completion operations and drilling research areas are more emphasized in geothermal projects where the costs may be reduced and efficiency significantly increased through good design
Mansour and Dahi (Mansour et al, 2018) introduced another smart lost circulation materials (LCM) made of anionic shape memory polymer and a numerical model to see the effect of particle and fracture size which can be a solution for lost circulation problem with the ability to seal big fractures and not plugging the drilling tools
Summary
Based on the Lindal diagram (Blodgett, 2014) (Fig. 2), the potential utilization of geothermal fluids is represented at various temperatures that are valid today as well. In Iceland, space and district heating has been progressed vastly, where geothermal direct use had a share of 66% of primary energy usage in 2011 (Dickson, Fanellib); which has been increased to 96% of heating and cooling energy consumption in 2015 (Breembroek et al, 2013). The five countries, which are the leaders of geothermal energy direct utilization, use 65.8% of the whole world capacity (John and Boyd, 2016). According to an updated report released in 2015, worldwide geothermal installed capacity for electricity generation was 12,600 MWe, producing 73,549 GWh of energy in 2014 (Bertani, 2015). It is tried to present the most common issues in geothermal well drilling operations and to introduce the potential for the future research areas
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