Preliminary Study of Membrane Technology to Resolve Silica Scaling to Enhance Geothermal Binary Power Plant

Abstract

Large amount of hot brines produced by liquid-dominated geothermal field should lead to utilization of binary power plant in order to increase the installed capacity. However, binary power plant system extract energy from the hot brine that could increased the possibility of silica scaling either at the surface or at the reservoir because of the temperature decrease. Methods such as acidizing, water jetting, or alkaline injection has been proven could solve or prevent the occurrence of silica scaling. Still, those methods have their own limitation to solve silica scaling problem, such as economical or technological issues. Therefore we assume that physical separation methods such as sedimentation and filtration should be done to decreased the silica scaling problems. Membrane technology seems could filled the spot, because by using membrane technology the silica content in thermal fluid could be separated completely and decreased silica scaling potential. At the end of the process, the concentration of silica could be decreased by large number. Although the silica scaling problem might not be solved completely, but the decreased potential of silica scaling still could be achieved and lead to increased installed capacity since silica scaling tend to limitate the production of thermal fluid.