| Title | Predicting Thermal Responses at the EGS Collab Testbed Based on Tracer test-inferred Flow Fields |
|---|---|
| Authors | WU Hui, FU Pengcheng, Joseph P. MORRIS |
| Year | 2020 |
| Conference | Stanford Geothermal Workshop |
| Keywords | enhanced geothermal workshop, EGS Collab, thermal response, tracer modeling, thermal modeling |
| Abstract | The EGS Collab project is an ongoing in situ experiment designed to investigate the stimulation of fractures in rock and the circulation of fluids in the stimulated fracture network for enhanced geothermal system (EGS) applications. Following multiple hydraulic stimulations, a series of tracer tests were performed to understand flow characteristics between injection and production wells, and a long-term chilled-water circulation test was conducted to investigate the thermal behavior in the system. The present study aims to predict the thermal responses at the production well using flow fields characterized by tracer tests. We first apply a stochastic approach to performing massive realizations to simulate tracer transport processes in the stimulated hydraulic fracture. From the realizations that successfully reproduce the field tracer data, we retrieve the flow field in the fracture which is further used in subsequent thermal modeling to analyze heat transport behavior in the EGS Collab testbed. The simulated thermal responses at the production well are demonstrated, and the thermal breakthrough time is predicted from the modeling results. |