Tracer Test and Streamline Simulation for Geothermal Resources in Cuona of Tibet

Lei Wang,Changming Zhu,Lihua Zuo

doi:10.3390/fluids5030128

Lei Wang, Changming Zhu + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/fluids5030128

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Abstract

The exploration and production of geothermal energy have been important missions for the energy contribution of the world, especially because geothermal energy is one environmentally friendly resource. The geothermal resources exist around the world but there are differences in the exploration and production procedures depending on the geophysical properties and brine temperatures in each reservoir. There are plenty of geothermal reservoirs in southwest China but the subsurface situations are so complicated that it is hard to produce the geothermal resource economically and in an environmentally friendly way. In this paper, we summarized the current situations of the geothermal exploration in Cuona and studied the impact of injection wells on the geothermal production performance. Tracer tests were performed to test the connections between three injection wells and two production wells and the streamline algorithm based on Complex Analysis Potential methods is applied to simulate the trajectories and running time of the water from the injection well. The tracer test results were analyzed to get possible interconnection relations between different wells. The most reasonable subsurface conditions including porosity and faults locations were investigated. The technique proposed here could be extended and applied for other geothermal projects in China and other countries in the world.

Highlights

As one renewable energy resource, geothermal energy has been a big contribution to the energy industry, especially because it is renewable and clean
The flow rates of three injection wells are constant of 20 m3 /h and the flow rates of 2 production wells are constant of 30 m3 /h, so that the equations listed above can be applied directly
Assume other parameters are fixed, after adjusting the porosity and matching with the tracer arrival time shown in Figure 3, it is determined that the streamline results of porosity φ = 0.05 is the best match, in which case the water injected from QJ-14 took 2 days to arrive at QJ-15

Summary

Introduction

As one renewable energy resource, geothermal energy has been a big contribution to the energy industry, especially because it is renewable and clean. As estimated by many engineers [2,3,4], China has a lot of geothermal resources, assessed as. The exploration and production of geothermal resources in China began much later than the rest of the world, with the total installed capacity of only 27.78 MW of electrical power [4]. One reason is that the locations of the geothermal energy are mostly in southwest China, where the geophysical. It is right on the boundary of two tectonic plates, European Plate and Indian Plate (Figure 1). It is right on the boundary of two tectonic plates, European Plate and Indian. The tectonic activities are very popular and there are a lot of dry hot rocks close to the surface

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Conclusion