Evolution of Hydraulic Fracture Permeability in EGS Considering Natural Fracture Compressibility and Strength of the Surrounding Rock

Abstract

ABSTRACT: The long-term success of an Enhanced Geothermal System (EGS) project requires distributed fluid flow in created fractures, ideally each with uniform and moderate permeability to avoid early thermal breakthrough. Yet, thermal depletion causes fracture opening, increasing the likelihood of flow channeling in areas with high fracture permeability. Furthermore, the effective reservoir rock stiffness (including natural fracture compliance) has a first-order impact on thermally induced stress changes, and thus fracture permeability. The objective of this work is to explore the role of thermal depletion on hydraulic fracture permeability considering a non-linear elastoplastic geothermal reservoir response. We utilize three-dimensional numerical simulations based on effective medium theory of fractured rocks to implicitly account for natural fracture compressibility and strength. Results demonstrate that a portion of the thermal strain-induced by cooling- is absorbed by natural fracture compressibility, which reduces the overall stress change, and tends to attenuate hydraulic fracture opening. Critically stressed natural fractures can yield during operation and decrease the likelihood of flow channeling. Lastly, the modeling results indicate that linear elastic models tend to overpredict fracture opening compared to models that account for effective properties of fractured rock masses. 1 INTRODUCTION Predictions of recoverable heat energy from Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) reservoirs with models that neglect stress-dependent and non-linear fracture permeability are conservative estimates (Kohl et al., 1995). Flow channeling and thermal short-circuiting caused by thermo-poroelastic coupled feedback is often observed early on in field tests and would limit the installed capacity unless efforts were made to improve the flow distribution (MIT, 2006). Localized fracture opening increases injectivity and decreases the geothermal effective reservoir volume by localizing injected flow (Hicks et al., 1996). Hence, reservoir stresses (in-situ and any changes during operation) play a significant role in the distribution of EGS circulation fluid and evolution of fracture permeability (McLean and Espinoza, 2023). Spatial heterogeneity in the initial fracture aperture may further decrease reservoir performance from the beginning because preferential flow paths may exist prior to injection (Guo et al., 2016).