Understanding how fluids and heat move through fractured rocks is essential for many subsurface technologies, including geothermal energy production, groundwater management, underground energy storage and environmental remediation. In fractured geological formations, fluid flow and transport processes are controlled by complex interactions between fracture geometry, fluid properties and heat exchange with the surrounding rock matrix. These processes are difficult to predict using conventional models because natural fractures are highly heterogeneous and often exhibit irregular rough surfaces.
The GEONEAT project addresses these challenges by developing modelling approaches designed to capture the essential interplay between geological heterogeneity, fluid properties, and heat transfer processes in fractured media. In particular, the project investigates how structural heterogeneity, including fracture roughness and network connectivity, interacts with fluid rheology and thermal exchange between fractures and the surrounding rock matrix to control large-scale transport processes. These mechanisms are relevant in many subsurface applications where complex fluids are injected underground and where heat transfer plays a central role.
The overall objective of the project is to improve the predictive capability of models used to describe flow and transport in fractured systems. By combining theoretical analysis, numerical simulations and stochastic modelling approaches, the project investigates how microscopic processes occurring inside fractures can be upscaled to predict macroscopic transport behaviour at larger scales. Particular attention is devoted to the role of complex fluid rheology and to the thermal signatures that such fluids may generate during flow and heat transport in fractured media.
The results are expected to contribute to more reliable modelling tools for geothermal systems, subsurface energy technologies and groundwater resources.
