Synergy potential for oil and geothermal energy exploitation

Zaman Ziabakhsh-Ganji,Hamidreza M Nick,Marinus E Donselaar,David F Bruhn

doi:10.1016/j.apenergy.2017.12.113

Abstract

A new solution for harvesting energy simultaneously from two different sources of energy by combining geothermal energy production and thermal enhanced heavy oil recovery is introduced. Numerical simulations are employed to evaluate the feasibility of generating energy from geothermal resources, both for thermally enhanced oil recovery from a heavy oil reservoir and for direct heating purposes. A single phase non-isothermal fluid flow modeling for geothermal doublet system and a two-phase non-isothermal fluid flow modelling for water flooding in an oil reservoir are utilised. Sensitivity and feasibility analyses of the synergy potential of thermally-enhanced oil recovery and geothermal energy production are performed. A series of simulations are carried out to examine the effects of reservoir properties on energy consumption and oil recovery for different injection rates and injection temperature. Our results show that total oil production strongly depends on the shape of heat plume which can be affected by porosity, permeability, injection temperature, well spacing and injection rate in the oil reservoir. The favourable oil recovery obtains at high amount of (a) injection rate, (b) injection temperature, (c) porosity and (d) low amount of oil reservoir permeability respectively. Furthermore, our study indicates the wellbore spacing plays an important role in oil recovery and an optimum wellbore spacing can be established. The analyses suggest that the extra amount of oil produced by utilising the geothermal energy could make the geothermal business case independent and may be a viable option to reduce the overall project cost. Furthermore, the results display that the enhance oil productions are able to reduce the required subsidy for a single doublet geothermal project up to 50%.

Highlights

In the Netherlands geothermal energy production from deep geological formations has a great potential as environmentally benign heat source, and its usage has been growing since the first well doublets were realised in 2007 [1]
Our results show that total oil production strongly depends on the shape of heat plume which can be affected by porosity, permeability, injection temperature, well spacing and injection rate in the oil reservoir
We develop a model involving the solution of a nonlinear conduction-convection heat transport and two phase fluid flow occurring in porous media to analyse the key parameters such as porosity, permeability and the injection rate/temperature in the oil reservoir and how these parameters could control the ultimate heavy oil recovery, sweep efficiency and the geothermal energy consumption

Summary

Introduction

In the Netherlands geothermal energy production from deep geological formations has a great potential as environmentally benign heat source, and its usage has been growing since the first well doublets were realised in 2007 [1]. Many of the geothermal reservoirs identified and currently used in the hot sedimentary aquifers of the Netherlands are in close proximity and often from the same reservoir rocks as the well-characterised hydrocarbon resources of the country. Even though these oil and gas reservoirs have been exploited successfully for many decades, not all of the known resources have been produced, some reservoirs have even been abandoned for various reasons. The viscosity of the oil was too high to be produced economically

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