| Title | Optimal Experimental Design (OED) for Finding Optimally Located Boreholes in Geothermal Engineering |
|---|---|
| Authors | Ralf SEIDLER, H. Martin BUECKER, Kateryna PADALKINA, Michael HERTY, Jan NIEDERAU, Gabriele MARQUART, Christoph CLAUSER |
| Year | 2015 |
| Conference | World Geothermal Congress |
| Keywords | geothermal drilling, optimal experimental design, numerical simulation |
| Abstract | An obstacle for further commercial utilization of deep geothermal resources is the high cost for deep drilling in regard to the productivity risk of a well. Minimizing the risk by optimizing the location of a well is thus a question of primary importance. For a given geological model of a reservoir, we demonstrate how this problem may be tackled by a mathematical optimization approach called optimal experimental design. We show how this problem can be mathematically derived, numerically formulated, and practically implemented using distributed computing. We discuss an example for a sedimentary geothermal reservoir in Western Australia with six lithological units. We show how optimized positions of bore holes can be determined such that uncertainty of estimating the hydraulic permeability of a target rock unit from temperature measurements is minimized. We discuss different optimality criteria and the influence of different a priori permeabilities in the various rock units. |