| Title | Numerical Study of CO2 Based Enhanced Geothermal System at Chumathang Field, Ladakh, India |
|---|---|
| Authors | Sri Kalyan TANGIRALA, Mrityunjay SINGH |
| Year | 2020 |
| Conference | World Geothermal Congress |
| Keywords | Chumathang geothermal field, Enhanced Geothermal System, CO2, Discrete fracture network |
| Abstract | India has a vast amount of geothermal resources spread across its landmass. The high enthalpy resources are located close to the plate boundary of the Indian and Eurasian plates. Two of the most promising geothermal regions of India are the Puga and Chumathang geothermal fields. They lie on either side of the Indus Tsangpo suture zone, with the Chumathang field on its north and at an elevation of 3950 m from the mean sea level. Chumathang field has a geothermal gradient of around 80 °C/km. The Himalayan granites have high concentrations of U, Th, and K in addition to being on the plate boundary, which explains the high geothermal gradient in that region. Mahe fault lies close to the Chumathang field and helps in the percolation of fluids in and out of the field and also supplies a high heat flow rate. We numerically modeled a hot dry rock reservoir at a 2 km depth and away from the hydrothermally altered zone of the Chumathang field. Supercritical CO2 was used as the heat transferring fluid due to its low reactivity and low viscosity. A connected discrete fracture network using LaGriT as the meshing software and PFLOTRAN as the heat and mass transport solver was used to study heat transport by injecting cold liquid CO2 and producing hot supercritical CO2 and water for estimating the energy extraction potential. |