Technology for Increasing Geothermal Energy Productivity. Computer Models to Characterize the Chemical Interactions of Goethermal Fluids and Injectates with Reservoir Rocks, Wells, Surface Equiptment [electronic resource].

Published: Washington, D.C. : United States. Dept. of Energy, 2006.
Oak Ridge, Tenn. : Distributed by the Office of Scientific and Technical Information, U.S. Dept. of Energy.
Additional Creators: University of California, San Diego, United States. Department of Energy, United States. Department of Energy. Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, and United States. Department of Energy. Office of Scientific and Technical Information

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Summary

This final report describes the results of a research program we carried out over a five-year (3/1999-9/2004) period with funding from a Department of Energy geothermal FDP grant (DE-FG07-99ID13745) and from other agencies. The goal of research projects in this program were to develop modeling technologies that can increase the understanding of geothermal reservoir chemistry and chemistry-related energy production processes. The ability of computer models to handle many chemical variables and complex interactions makes them an essential tool for building a fundamental understanding of a wide variety of complex geothermal resource and production chemistry. With careful choice of methodology and parameterization, research objectives were to show that chemical models can correctly simulate behavior for the ranges of fluid compositions, formation minerals, temperature and pressure associated with present and near future geothermal systems as well as for the very high PT chemistry of deep resources that is intractable with traditional experimental methods. Our research results successfully met these objectives. We demonstrated that advances in physical chemistry theory can be used to accurately describe the thermodynamics of solid-liquid-gas systems via their free energies for wide ranges of composition (X), temperature and pressure. Eight articles on this work were published in peer-reviewed journals and in conference proceedings. Four are in preparation. Our work has been presented at many workshops and conferences. We also considerably improved our interactive web site (geotherm.ucsd.edu), which was in preliminary form prior to the grant. This site, which includes several model codes treating different XPT conditions, is an effective means to transfer our technologies and is used by the geothermal community and other researchers worldwide. Our models have wide application to many energy related and other important problems (e.g., scaling prediction in petroleum production systems, stripping towers for mineral production processes, nuclear waste storage, CO2 sequestration strategies, global warming). Although funding decreases cut short completion of several research activities, we made significant progress on these abbreviated projects.

Report Numbers

E 1.99:id13745
id13745

Subject(s)

Geothermal Energy

Other Subject(s)

Note

Published through SciTech Connect.
07/25/2006.
"id13745"
Nancy Moller Weare.

Type of Report and Period Covered Note

Final; 03/18/1999 - 09/30/2004

Funding Information

FG36-99ID13745

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