Record Details

Title Physics-Guided Deep Learning for Prediction of Geothermal Reservoir Performance
Authors Zhen QIN, Anyue JIANG, Dave FAULDER, Trenton T. CLADOUHOS, and Behnam JAFARPOUR
Year 2022
Conference Stanford Geothermal Workshop
Keywords machine learning, physics-informed, neural networks, geothermal reservoir
Abstract Data-driven predictive models have recently been developed and applied to the prediction of energy production from geothermal reservoirs. Traditional physics-based simulation models that are often used for predicting the performance of geothermal reservoirs require detailed information of reservoir conditions and properties, in-depth technical knowledge, and extensive computational efforts. Data-driven models, on the other hand, extract complex statistical patterns from representative training data and use them for prediction. Deep learning-based architectures offer powerful and fast prediction models that are amenable to flexible implementation and convenient deployment and application. Despite their efficiency, data-driven models suffer from three main limitations: 1) extensive data requirements, 2) lack of physical plausibility and interpretability, and 3) poor generalizability beyond training data. These limitations undermine the use of data-driven models for applications in complex science and engineering problems. We develop a novel physics-informed machine learning approach that integrates physics-based representations into recurrent neural network (RNN) models. A typical approach for enabling the incorporation of physics is to regularize the learning of trainable parameters by adding a physics-guided loss function as a regularization term. In this framework, the architecture of the deep learning model is designed based on the governing equations as well as expert knowledge of the physical system. We present a variant of the RNN as a physics-guided deep-learning model for predicting the dynamical responses of geothermal reservoirs. Inspired by the lumped-parameter modelling, the architecture of the predictive model is designed based on simplified governing equations (i.e., conservation of energy). Different components of heat-transfer terms are incorporated into the architecture of physics-informed RNN to approximately represent the behaviour of the underlying dynamics. We present the physics-informed RNN approach in detail and demonstrate its prediction performance by applying it to data from a field-scale geothermal reservoir model.
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