Objective
To demonstrate that secondary heat recovery is technically and economically feasible through water circulation in a depleted (reservoir pressure and flowrate) geothermal system.
The project started on April 1st, 1996. In the first six-months of the contract, ENEL carried out a preliminary selection of wells available for geophone location, performing many thermal logs in order to verify the temperature and the accessibility of each wells. Together with CSMA were selected 3 wells where 4-component geophones can be located at depth of 370-550m, with temperature range of 100-180°C. On the basis of a data set including stratigraphic, thermic and velocity data, CSMA carried out a preliminary microseismic network modelling. In this first step of study ENEL and CSMA agreed to utilize clamped geophones with temperature specification of 200°C. A preliminary design of well-head assembly for down-hole geophone location was also performed.
In the period October '96 - March '97 CSMA completed the sonde design after further laboratory tests which indicated the possibility to use no-clamped sondes. In this way the temperature performance of the sonde was increased up to 240-260°C. On the bases of these laboratory results CSMA started with manufacturing of a trial sonde.
In the same period April '97 - September '97 CSMA completed the sonde manufacturing and recorded many check shots in order to verify the response of the prototype 4-component seismic tool and its efficiency in the environment of wells. Check shots were performed in two of the three wells selected for the down-hole geophone location and were recorded keeping the seimsic tool at various depths. Throughout this test procedure the tool worked normally and useful information regarding the best environment for deploying the tools was also gained. The best responses for the signal monitoring was obtained deploying the tool at the bottom of the weels with 5m of slack cable.
In the same period ENEL arranged for well head assembly and holes in the neighbourhood of each well. The holes are used to set air-gun tools. During the field trials ENEL helped CSMA technicians providing operative personnel, truck and the check shot air-gun tool. Further activities were performed by ENEL in order to pin-point a location where a new well could be drilled to a depth of about 400m. Firstly this will be used for micro-charge firings aimed to reconstruct a detailed velocity model and then to locate a further 4-component geophone.
The Lardello-Valle Secolo geothermal field has been intensively exploited since the 1950s. The exploitation has caused a strong decline in fluid production from 300 to 110 Kg/s and reservoir pressure from 3 to 0.5 Mpa over 20 years. The reservoir temperature remained at 240-250°C and a large amount of thermal energy is still stored in the reservoir rocks. Water injection into this superheated formation will permit the recovery of some of thermal energy stored.
Test reinjections of all the discharged condensed steam (20% of the produced fluid) have proved successful, halting the decline in reservoir pressure whilst maintaining temperature. It is now proposed to increase the injection rate significantly to increase secondary heat recovery. Extra fluid will be supplied from a well located on the border of the field and condensed steam from Travale-Radicondoli geothermal area.
There is a significant risk of causing thermal breakthrough between injection and production wells. It is proposed to monitor the injection with a high resolution microseismic network. R&D into HDR geothermal energy has shown that fluid injections can be monitored by mapping the resulting induced microseismicity.
Microseismic monitoring will be used to optimise the injection and determine which wells should be used as injection wells and for how long.
The Lardello area has one of the longest records of geothermal exploitation for electricity generation in the world. If this demonstration is successful it will enable these techniques to be applied to other geothermal fields throughout the world for improved thermal recovery. The success of this technique will impact the economics of exploitation of geothermal resources.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- engineering and technology electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering electrical engineering power engineering electric power generation
- social sciences economics and business economics
- natural sciences earth and related environmental sciences geology seismology microseisms
- engineering and technology environmental engineering energy and fuels renewable energy geothermal energy
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Coordinator
56122 Pisa
Italy
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