TY - JOUR
T1 - Impact of structural uncertainty on tracer test design in faulted geothermal reservoirs
AU - Dashti, Ali
AU - Gholami Korzani, Maziar
AU - Geuzaine, Christophe
AU - Egert, Robert
AU - Kohl, Thomas
N1 - Funding Information:
Ali Dashti is receiving the financial support from The German Academic Exchange Service (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst: DAAD) to do his PhD in Germany as the Research Grants- Doctoral programmes in Germany 2019/20. This organization is appreciated for giving the opportunity to researchers. The study is also part of the Helmholtz portfolio project Geoenergy. The support from the program “Renewable Energies", under the topic “Geothermal Energy Systems”, is gratefully acknowledged. Dr. Jacques Bodin is appreciated due to his help on using MFIT and informative comments.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 Elsevier Ltd
PY - 2023/1/1
Y1 - 2023/1/1
N2 - Evaluation of underground processes requires numerical modeling based on sophisticated and reliable meshing. Our new GeoMeshPy library focuses on the discretization of probabilistic geological structures. This study presents a synthetic show-case for the capacity of this library to quantify the impact of structural uncertainty. In here, 50 models were developed taking advantage of the computational efficiency of GeoMeshPy. Assuming a geothermal doublet system embedded in a faulted reservoir with unclear structure, recovery time and magnitude of a tracer breakthrough was calculated. Even small angular variations up to ±15° in one of the faults yield differences of up to 26 and 30 percent for peak arrival time and magnitude, respectively. An additional inversion scheme of each of the 50 curves allows quantifying the impact on Péclet number varying from 3.4 to 4.3 due to structural variability. Analytically calculated dispersion coefficients are almost one order of magnitude higher than values used for simulations. Besides this mismatch, calculated dispersion coefficients are unable to represent the structural uncertainty (ranging from 125.6 to 129.4 m).
AB - Evaluation of underground processes requires numerical modeling based on sophisticated and reliable meshing. Our new GeoMeshPy library focuses on the discretization of probabilistic geological structures. This study presents a synthetic show-case for the capacity of this library to quantify the impact of structural uncertainty. In here, 50 models were developed taking advantage of the computational efficiency of GeoMeshPy. Assuming a geothermal doublet system embedded in a faulted reservoir with unclear structure, recovery time and magnitude of a tracer breakthrough was calculated. Even small angular variations up to ±15° in one of the faults yield differences of up to 26 and 30 percent for peak arrival time and magnitude, respectively. An additional inversion scheme of each of the 50 curves allows quantifying the impact on Péclet number varying from 3.4 to 4.3 due to structural variability. Analytically calculated dispersion coefficients are almost one order of magnitude higher than values used for simulations. Besides this mismatch, calculated dispersion coefficients are unable to represent the structural uncertainty (ranging from 125.6 to 129.4 m).
KW - Geothermal reservoir
KW - Probabilistic models
KW - Structural uncertainty
KW - Uncertainty quantification
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85141288218
U2 - 10.1016/j.geothermics.2022.102607
DO - 10.1016/j.geothermics.2022.102607
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85141288218
SN - 0375-6505
VL - 107
JO - Geothermics
JF - Geothermics
M1 - 102607
ER -