| Abstract |
In 2003 we published our first assessment of the medium- to low-temperature (T less or about 200°C) Mexican geothermal resources. It was based on a database of 1,358 geothermal manifestations (surface manifestations, e.g. springs, fumaroles, water wells, etc.) identified at that time. Due to lack of information on one or more relevant parameters, such as geographical coordinates, reservoir or surface temperature, type of fluid, etc., that assessment included only about 30% of the geothermal manifestations in the database. Since then our group significantly increased the amount of information in the database by field work and data compilation from different sources, developed a relational database and linked it with a Geographical Information System, and published several partial and complete updates. This work presents our 2014 assessment of the medium- to low-temperature Mexican geothermal resources based on our current database which includes 2,376 geothermal manifestations. This assessment incorporates important improvements on the coordinates´ accuracy of a significant number of manifestations, coordinates for manifestations that were lacking before as well as relevant new chemical data. Due to these improvements, the present results include 68.94% of the geothermal manifestations in the database, a vast progress over our first estimate. As before, we relied on the volume method and Montecarlo simulations to estimate geothermal resources and their uncertainties for each identified geothermal system. In all, we estimated the geothermal resources of 924 individual geothermal systems which included 2,082 geothermal manifestations (as before, a significant fraction of the identified manifestations lack relevant information) located in 26 of the 32 Mexican States. In most cases these resources would be classified as “inferred resources”, according to the Australian Geothermal Code. We then added the inferred thermal energy statistical distributions of the geothermal systems in each State by Montecarlo simulation, to obtain the State´s aggregate geothermal resource. Finally, we added the inferred thermal energy statistical distributions of the geothermal systems in the country, by Montecarlo simulation, and obtained the aggregated resources of the 26 Mexican States and its uncertainty. We also present the statistical distribution of our estimated most likely temperatures in the studied systems. These resources contain massive amounts of thermal energy that could be used in a wide variety of direct applications and power generation. They are potentially important for the economy of 26 of the 32 Mexican States. |