The Bedretto tunnel in Ticino, Southern Switzerland has been identified to provide ideal conditions for underground in-situ experiments on the meso-scale related to geo-energies. The tunnel is located in the Rotondo Granite and comes with 1’000m plus overburden rock mass, for this reason providing a setting that is similar to typical deep reservoirs.
The Bedretto tunnel is a 5km long side...
In general, high-enthalpy geothermal systems are characterized by a presence of vapor or coexistence of vapor-liquid phases. There is a complex phase transition (condensation) process during its development with cold water re-injection. Also, high-enthalpy geothermal reservoirs either contain naturally developed fractures or need induced fractures for fluid to flow at economically relevant...
Predictive Mechanical model for fracture stimulation in an enhanced geothermal system (EGS) context
Keywords: GEMex, Enhanced Geothermal System (EGS), scanline survey, Discrete fracture model (DFM), Finite Element Method (FEM)
ABSTRACT
The development of an EGS is one of the goals of the GEMex project, an international collaboration of two consortia, one from Europe and one from Mexico. The...
The fluid flow in Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) is dominated by hydraulically stimulated fractures and faults which are the key elements of their hydraulic performance and sustainability. At the fault scale, the flow performance is influenced by the aperture distribution which is strongly dependent on the fault roughness, the geological fault sealing, the relative shear displacement, and...
