Fluid circulation at fractured basement/cover unconformity is of first importance for geothermal energy exploitation especially in continental rifting as the Upper Rhine Graben. This unconformity presents lot of natural fractures which constitute a large permeable fracture network driving brine movement. That constitutes a reservoir of hot water, which is exploited by several geothermal power p...

A full scale snow melting system with heat pipe technology is built in this work, which avoids the negative effects on concrete structure and environment caused by traditional deicing chemicals. The snow melting, ice-freezing performance and temperature distribution characteristics of heat pipe concrete runway were discussed by the outdoor experiments. The results show that the temperature of t...

Geothermal power generation and mineral extraction from geothermal brines are affected by chemical processes within the reservoir. Until recently, numerical simulation technology for geothermal systems could not handle most chemical processes, except for tracking total salinity, one or two noncondensable gases, and non-reactive tracers. The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) has devel...

Geothermal resources have the potential of contributing significantly to sustainable development in many parts of the world. Sustainable management of a geothermal resource involves utilization at a rate, which may be maintained for a very long time (100300 years). The energy production potential of geothermal systems is primarily determined by the pressure decline caused by production. Overexp...

This paper presents a post-audit of a 1978 examination of economic impacts of geothermal energy development in the Imperial Valley Region of California. It is intended to demonstrate the usefulness of this approach in evaluating the validity of renewable resource development in general. The 1978 examination based its estimates on a projection of 4500 MW of electricity generation capacity develo...

A lot of oil and gas reservoirs have been or will be abandoned in petroleum industry. In this study, we pointed out that these oil and gas reservoirs might be transferred into exceptional enhanced geothermal reservoirs with very high temperatures by oxidizing the residual oil with injected air. A concept to generate power from these exceptional enhanced geothermal reservoirs by using geothermal...

The efficiency of Geothermal Heat Pumps (GHPs) strongly depends on the site-specific parameters of the ground, which should therefore be mapped for the rational planning of shallow geothermal installations. In this paper, a case study is presented for the potentiality assessment of low enthalpy geothermal energy in the Province of Cuneo, a district of 6900 km2 in Piedmont, NW Italy. The availab...

This paper presents the outlines of a new Hot Wet Rock (HWR) geothermal project. The goal of the project is to develop a design methodology for combined artificial and natural crack geothermal reservoir systems with the objective of enhancing the thermal output of existing geothermal power plants. The proposed concept of HWR and the research tasks of the project are described.

Geothermal energy is a clean, green renewable resource, which can be utilized for power generation, heating, cooling, and could effectively replace oil, gas, and coal. In recent years, oil companies have put more efforts into exploiting and utilizing geothermal energy with advanced technologies for heat-tracing oil gathering and transportation, central heating, etc., which has not only reduced ...