| Authors |
Helmut Wahanik, Instituto Nacional de Matemática Pura e Aplicada, Ali Akbar
Eftekhari Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands, J. Bruining, SPE,
Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands, Dan Marchesin Instituto
Nacional de Matemática Pura e Aplicada, Karl Heinz Wolf, Delft University of
Technology, The Netherlands
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| Source |
Canadian Unconventional Resources and International Petroleum Conference,
19-21 October 2010,
Calgary, Alberta, Canada
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Abstract
Concern about global warming is generating interest in reducing the emissions
of greenhouse gases such as CO2. One way of reducing CO2 emissions is to
replace conventional (hydrocarbon fuels) energy sources for heating buildings
by geothermal energy. Recently it was suggested to co-inject carbon dioxide
with cold water for simultaneous geothermal energy production and subsurface
carbon dioxide storage. Our data correspond to a geothermal energy project
proposed for heating the buildings of the Technical University of Delft. After
injection of the water/CO2 mixture a complex interaction between physical
transport and the phase redistribution of the components, i.e., water and CO2,
occurs. This redistribution is usually described in terms of local
thermodynamic equilibrium. There are no published complete analytical solutions
for 1-D problems involving complex thermodynamics that include CO2 and heat
effects in the flow. We take into account the heat effects related to the cold
fluid injection and related to the dissolution of CO2.
We give an analytical solution for the model equations for the temperature and
for the flow of CO2, vapor and water after combined injection of a cold carbon
dioxide-water mixture in a geothermal reservoir. Due to high pressures and
temperatures, CO2 is in a supercritical state and it is necessary to determine
the phase equilibrium for non-ideal gases. We used a modification of the
Peng-Robinson equation of state and an activity coefficient based mixing rule
for the thermodynamic calculations. A volume shift procedure is applied to
obtain an accurate liquid density. The structure of the solution depends
strongly on the injection and initial reservoir conditions. The application of
the work is in the effective recovery of heat from geothermal reservoirs with
simultaneous CO2 storage. Moreover, the theory provides fundamental
understanding of non-isothermal flow of mixtures undergoing mass transfer
between phases. The advantage of the analytical model is that it provides a
simple methodology to screen injection conditions for optimal geothermal
recovery or maximal storage of carbon dioxide.
Introduction
Concern about global warming is generating interest in reducing the emissions
of greenhouse gases such as CO2. There is a large body of literature concerning
the injection of carbon dioxide in aquifers. Practical examples are the
injection of the separated carbon dioxide produced in the Sleipner gas field
(Kongsjorden, Kårstad et al. 1998; Zweigel, Arts et al. 2004) and the Salah
field in Algeria (Riddiford, Wright et al. 2004). One way of reducing CO2
emissions is to replace conventional (hydrocarbon fuels) energy sources for
heating buildings with geothermal energy. An important aspect is the transfer
rate of carbon dioxide to the water phase, because the storage volume of
dissolved carbon dioxide is much lower than gaseous carbon dioxide (R.
Farajzadeh 2010; Gmelin's Handbuch). The use of high quality energy to heat
buildings has aroused recent interest in geothermal energy, which has low
quality but can be used equally well for space heating. In the Netherlands,
there is a geothermal gradient of about 30oC/km leading to a temperature of
around 80oC at a depth of 2000 m. There are numerous papers that describe
injection of cold water in geothermal reservoirs and here we only mention the
classical paper of Lauwerier (Lauwerier 1955).
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