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Abandoned oil and gas wells can be used as low temperature geothermal resources for heat extraction from geological formations. They can provide valuable potential sources of heat without the extra cost of deep drilling required in traditional geothermal projects. In this study, two oil wells (AZ and DQ) in southern Iran were numerically simulated...
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... geothermal binary cycle power plant combined with solar PV and CST system is proposed. Heat is extracted by injection of water into an abandoned oil and gas well through concentric double pipe heat exchanger. Freshwater is injected from the outer tube of a concentric double heat exchanger to the well and it is heated up by receiving heat from the ground around the well, then the hot working fluid returns to the surface from inner tube of concentric double tube heat exchanger. Fig. 1 shows the schematic of concentric double tube heat exchanger and casing of oil wells for heat extraction from the well [24]. Electricity can be generated by extracted heat of abandoned oil and gas wells in an optimised binary cycle that works with working fluid of isobutene, as shown in a power cycle in Fig. 2. According to the recent studies, isobutene produces the highest power in low-temperature geothermal binary cycle [25,26]. The generated and consumed power and net produced power in a binary cycle is shown in Fig. 3. With the increase of rate of injected fluid to the well, the extracted heat generated from well increases. Thus the ability of power production in binary cycle increases. According to Fig. 3, while the slope of power generation decreases, the slope of electricity consumption increases and this procedure results in creating an optimum point for net produced electricity of cycle. This optimum point occurs in rate of 11.9 kg/s. In this point, the produced power is 577 kW and the net power equals to 364 kW. For this reason, to increase production capacity of the cycle, two new hybrid cycles for using solar energy in combination with heat extracted from abandoned oil and gas wells have been proposed. The proposed Geo-Solar power cycle is shown in Figs. 4 and ...
Context 2
... double tube heat exchanger. Fig. 1 shows the schematic of concentric double tube heat exchanger and casing of oil wells for heat extraction from the well [24]. Electricity can be generated by extracted heat of abandoned oil and gas wells in an optimised binary cycle that works with working fluid of isobutene, as shown in a power cycle in Fig. 2. According to the recent studies, isobutene produces the highest power in low-temperature geothermal binary cycle [25,26]. The generated and consumed power and net produced power in a binary cycle is shown in Fig. 3. With the increase of rate of injected fluid to the well, the extracted heat generated from well increases. Thus the ...
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Citations
... Repurposing abandoned wells for geothermal energy is www.nature.com/scientificreports/ also cost effective as it would reduce the drilling cost and consequently the overall capital cost of the plant 5,10,14 . ...
... I. P) at these five well sites for Lk + Th Formation were evaluated using Eqs. (5) and (6). The below Table 6 presents the calculated heat-in-place (H. ...
This study proposes an integrated approach of assessing CO2 storage potential and geothermal energy prospect based on the data of seventeen depleted wells of Upper Assam Basin which could assist the global objective of net zero transition. The petrophysical properties of Tipam, Barail and Lakadong + Therria Formations from the seventeen wells have been utilised to perform the Monte Carlo simulation for probabilistic estimation of the CO2 storage in the Upper Assam Basin. This preliminary work showed that the mean storage capacity of 18.8 ± 0.7 MT, 19.8 ± 0.9 MT and 4.5 ± 0.8 MT could potentially be stored in the three geological formations of the basin. The corrected bottom hole temperature values for the studied seventeen wells were determined using the well log data and Waples and Harrison method; these values provided a static geothermal gradient for each well, which varies widely from 0.017 to 0.033 °C/m. In order to enable geothermal prospectivity, static formation temperature maps have been generated for the studied wells. The probabilistic assessment of stored heat-in-place and formation temperature maps delimited five prospective sites for the extraction of geothermal energy in the basin. The study also presented a risk assessment for CO2 storage development in the basin. Further, the study illustrated an economic analysis of the implementation of a CO2 storage project and geothermal operations in the basin.
... Iran is one of the most important oil and natural gas exporting countries. Statistics show more than 98% of Iran's energy consumption is provided through these sources, which has led to severe problems such as air pollution, and the effects of this pollution are more visible in metropolitan areas [13][14]. Along with this, statics showed a share of 1.97% in global CO2 emission in the year 2018, which made this developing country the seventh CO2 producer country around the world [15]. ...
Fossil fuel power plants produce a significant amount of CO2 emissions, and this pollutant causes global warming, respiratory and heart diseases, and other significant issues. Electricity interprets as a primary and rising demand in each energy system; thus, in this paper, carbon dioxide (CO2) emission reduction was selected as the objective value for 2025. Power plant fuel consumption was surveyed to calculate the CO2 emission caused by each fuel. Also, Esfahan province (an industrial province in Iran) was investigated as the study case. Forecasting the fuel consumption for 2025 was run by two parameters: population and Gross Domestic Production (GDP), which were forecasted by the report of the Iran Statics Center and the Gaussian Process Regression (GPR) method, respectively. The CO2 emission of power plants was obtained using the coefficients of each fuel. Based on Iran's commitment to the Paris Agreement, a 4% reduction of CO2 emissions is the main objective. Thus, this study aims to reach this goal by implementing four scenarios: a) adding renewable energies, b) adding renewable energies and improving the generation efficiency, c) adding renewable energies and decreasing the grid losses, and d) combining the three scenarios mentioned above. According to these scenarios, reformation strategies compensated 10.5% of the required power, which was satisfied by renewable energies, and finally, this province can gradually satisfy a 4% reduction until 2025.
... Repurposing hydrocarbon wells for geothermal use during an oilfield's late life has been explored in the UK [11] and Italian [12] contexts. While reusing abandoned wells [2,[13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23] appears attractive from a capital investment standpoint, challenges exist, including difficulties in controlling desired well depth and geothermal gradient in abandoned wells [10], and concerns related to mechanical integrity due to the well's age. ...
This article outlines an innovative approach to explore thermal energy extraction for power generation or industrial hot water applications. Unlike traditional steady-state models, this approach embraces time-variant scenarios, explicitly incorporating a cyclical fluid circulation strategy to maintain a stable surface fluid temperature or power output. By introducing an increasing and decreasing stepwise rate sequence and an intermittent circulation strategy, the method aims to optimize efficiency in response to varying geothermal gradients. This approach also considers the effect of well configurations namely U-shaped heat exchangers, and conventional wellbore heat exchangers. The study emphasizes the importance of assessing the value proposition of this rate-sequencing approach in different North American basins, with the potential for replication in other regions. This approach recognizes the geographic dependency of thermal prospects, particularly at specific well depths. Notably, the article explores the possibility of retrofitting abandoned wells in oil fields and drilling new wells in geothermal-friendly areas for a comparative analysis of their relative value propositions. In essence, the proposed roadmap signifies a departure from traditional models, showcasing a dynamic and adaptable strategy for thermal energy extraction. This strategy aligns with the need for energy transition and changing energy mix for the future. The inclusion of retrofitting existing wells and drilling in strategic locations adds a practical dimension to the study, offering insights into the scalability and applicability of the proposed approach beyond its initial geographic focus.
... By circulating fluid inside the DBHE, sufficient heat can be extracted from the high-temperature rocks around the single well, and the heat extracted by DBHE from underground can be used for building heating or geothermal power generation, etc. (Cheng et al. 2013;Bu et al. 2019). So far, numerous studies on the heat transfer performance of DBHE have been reported, including experiments (Morita et al. 1992a, b), numerical simulation (Kujawa et al. 2006; Davis and Michaelides 2009;Noorollahi et al. 2015;Nian and Cheng 2018;Hu et al. 2020), analytical solution (Luo et al. 2019(Luo et al. , 2020Pan et al. 2019), and combined methods (Wang et al. 2017;Cai et al. 2019;Huang et al. 2020), and their findings have proven the feasibility of DBHE. In Hawaii, Morita et al. (1992a, b) conducted experiments on DBHE with a depth of 876.5 m. ...
Open-loop borehole heat exchanger (OBHE) is a single well geothermal heat exchanger with an open-loop structure that can realize the geothermal energy extraction without mining the geothermal water. In this paper, a sandbox experiment is designed to simulate the convective heat transfer process in the reservoir area of OBHE. The mechanism of convective heat transfer in the reservoir area is studied, and the key factors that affect the convection heat transfer intensity are analyzed. The results show that the convection heat transfer of OBHE in the reservoir area is affected by both the driving effect of fluid flow inside the screen tube and the buoyancy effect. In the forward flow mode, the two effects have the opposite direction. While in the backward mode, the two effects have the same direction. The backward flow mode is more conducive to convective heat transfer. In addition, many factors influencing significantly the convective heat transfer of OBHE include inlet temperature, inlet flow rate, reservoir temperature, fluid flow direction and inner tube diameter.
... These technologies are deep borehole heat exchangers (DBHEs), made up of a set of coaxial pipes which extract heat by conduction. The use of deep borehole heat exchangers has been studied by Nalla et al., 2005, Kujawa et al., 2006, Davis and Michaelides, 2009, Templeton et al., 2014, Noorollahi et al., 2015, Alimonti et al., 2018, Westaway 2018, and Renaud et al., 2019, with different analytical and numerical models, thus demonstrating the feasibility of the plant, although with low effectiveness of heat extraction, with respect to the geofluid extraction for conventional wells. These studies assessed the amount of heat and energy that DBHEs could produce in small geothermal reservoir areas. ...
This study describes the geothermal response of the Phlegraean Fields as well as the impact of changes in its thermal and hydrodynamic properties brought on by a deep borehole heat exchanger (DBHE). For this purpose, we have developed a specialized model based on the Galerkin Method (GM) and the iterative Newton–Raphson algorithm to perform a transient simulation of heat transfer with fluid flow in porous media by solving the related system of coupled non-linear differential equations. A two-dimensional domain characterized with an anisotropic saturated porous media and a non-uniform grid is simulated. Extreme characteristics, such as non-uniformity in the distribution of the thermal source, are implemented as well as the fluid flow boundary conditions. While simulating the undisturbed geothermal reservoir and reaching the steady temperature, stream function, and velocity components, a DBHE is placed into the domain to evaluate its impact on the thermal and fluid flow fields. This research aims to identify and investigate the variables involved in the Phlegraean Fields and provide a numerical approach to accurately simulate the thermodynamic and hydrodynamic effects induced in a reservoir by a DBHE. The results show a maximum temperature change of 107.3°C in 200 years of service in the study area and a 65-year time limit is set for sustainable geothermal energy production.
... With respect to geological parameters, Cai et al. (2019), Morchio and Fossa (2019), Liu et al. (2020) investigated the influences of geological parameters on thermal extraction of DBHE. With respect to injection and extraction pipes, Noorollahi et al. (2015), Gharibi et al. (2018) researched the effects of pipe diameter, mass flow rate, fluid inlet temperature and insulation length on the extraction heat output. With respect to thermal resistance, Luo et al. (2019), Alimonti et al. (2019) studied the sensitivity towards borehole thermal resistance, fluid flow direction and geothermal gradient. ...
Deep borehole heat exchanger (DBHE) is a closed loop system without the problem of fluid losses, scale formation and corrosion; however, low rock thermal conductivity limits its performance. Enlightened by drilling mud loss in oil and gas industry, here an enhanced DBHE (EDBHE) is proposed by filling materials with much higher thermal conductivity into leakage formation or depleted gas and oil reservoir to enhance the thermal conductivity performance of rock. Solar thermal energy is stored into EDBHE during the non-heating season to replenish the loss of heat energy extracted during the heating season. The results show that average heat mining rate for 20 years operations is, respectively, 3686.5 and 26,384.4 kW for EDBHE filled by ordinary drilling mud and by composite materials with high thermal conductivity. The percentage reduction of heat mining rate for 20 years operations for EDBHE and the hybrid system of geothermal and solar energy are, respectively, 16.1 and 5.8%, indicating that the hybrid system can make the heat mining rate more stable.
... They also proposed an optimization method based on the lowest average energy consumption index. Noorollahi et al. [4] simulated heat transfer between the fluid injected into the well and the surrounding hot rock. Their results demonstrated that thermal gradients, input mass flow, the well casing geometry and size of injection and withdrawal piping are crucial for the thermal recovery output. ...
Coaxial borehole heat exchangers provide a practical method for geothermal energy extraction, but heat transfer efficiency is low. In order to address this problem, three coaxial borehole heat exchangers with vortex generators, based on the enhanced heat transfer theory, are proposed in this paper. The author compared and analyzed the heat transfer performance of three coaxial borehole heat exchangers with vortex generators and those of traditional structures, which explains why the new heat exchanger’s heat transfer mechanism is enhanced. The results demonstrated that the vortex generator can enhance the fluid flow’s turbulent kinetic energy in the coaxial heat exchanger. This generator can also improve the mixing characteristics of the fluid flow and heat transfer. The resultant increase in the inlet flow velocity can decrease the friction coefficient f, increase the Nusselt number and strengthen the coaxial sleeve. As a result, the heat exchange performance of the tubular heat exchanger will also be improved. The thread vortex generator (TVG) heat exchanger outperforms the other three heat exchangers in terms of heat exchange performance, extraction temperature and heat extraction power. The results evidenced that the TVG heat exchanger is better than the smooth tube heat exchanger. The thermal performance coefficient PEC was improved by 1.1 times, and the extraction temperature and heating power were increased by 24.06% and 11.93%, respectively. A solid theoretical foundation is provided by the extracted outcomes for designing and selecting high-efficiency coaxial borehole heat exchangers suitable for geothermal energy extraction.
... Dijkshoorn et al. [24] conducted data monitoring on the actual operation situation of C-DGHE at a depth of 2500 m, and analyzed the stability of buried pipes during long-term operation. In addition, Caulk et al. [25], Alimonti and Soldo [26], and Noorollahi et al. [27] discussed the practical applications after abandoned oil wells were transformed into C-DGHE. ...
... ce i (Specific heat capacity of inner pipe) (J/kg C) 133 c o (Specific heat capacity of outer pipe) (J/kg C) 486 c c (Specific heat capacity of cementing grout) (J/kg C) 1000 k i (Thermal conductivity of inner pipe) (W/(m C)) 0.031 k o (Thermal conductivity of outer pipe) (W/(m C))14.48 k c (Thermal conductivity of cementing grout) (W/(m C)) 1.34 GG (Geothermal gradient) ( C/km)27.03 T s (Ground surface temperature) ( C) 20.524 Thermophysical parameter of buried pipes and layered ground in the experiment Ref[23] ...
Based on the infinite line source model and logarithmic mean temperature difference, an analytical model for solving the heat transfer of coaxial-type deep-buried pipe has been proposed in this investigation. The actual assignment of vertical lithology and temperature values of the ground around the buried pipes could be realized by layered modeling. To validate the analytical model in terms of reliably calculating the real-time and on-way water temperature of buried pipes, the field experiment of buried-pipe heat transfer (at a depth of 2539 m in Xi'an) was carried out, and the numerical model developed based on the experiment was employed for corroboration. Further, by setting combined conditions of multiple factors affecting the heat transfer of buried pipes, the applicability of the analytical model under different model parameter combinations was substantiated, and the main factors affecting the calculation accuracy of the analytical model were analyzed. The results showed that the relative error between the analytical solution and experimental value was less than 5.92% for the buried-pipe heat transfer intensity under the experimental condition. The relative error between the analytical and numerical solutions was less than 6.20% under the combined conditions of multiple factors.
... Normally, when the oil resources have been exhausted to an economically unviable point, the wellbores are abandoned or simply cease to be used. Some countries, such as Albania, China, Croatia, the United States of America, Hungary, Israel, New Zealand, Poland, and Russia have financially supported research and work on the reuse of abandoned petroleum wellbores as sources of geothermal energy (e.g., Davis and Michaelides 2009;Noorollahi et al. 2015). The use of an abandoned petroleum wellbore for a geothermal project can reduce the investment costs of the project by more than 50%, which makes this option considerably attractive when it comes to a very large network of unused wellbores, including complete oil fields. ...
This research presents a 2D conductive thermal representation for geothermal systems through the development of a numerical model based on heat transfer equations using Fortran language and applying the Tri-Diagonal Matrix Algorithm as a numerical solver of the equations. This numerical model simulates the heat transfer between two geothermal wellbores, used as boundary conditions, and calculates the temperature distribution. In addition, the geometry and composition of the model are based on the stratigraphic columns of the wellbores. The effect of the scarcity of geothermal gradient measurements in geothermal prospects is reduced by using a 2D model that requires only information in two wellbores.
After applying the numerical model to a Hot Dry Rock zone and a sedimentary basin, it was found that the validation and accuracy estimation of the temperature profiles showed a good correlation and coherence between the measured and the simulated values. These results suggested the use of this numerical model for the reliable description of the thermal state of the upper section of the geothermal prospect with a high correlation with the observed measurements. This model would be very useful for defining the isotherms shape when planning the exploitation of the geothermal resource.
Finally, the practical use of this model was highlighted because it only requires the thermal logs and thermal conductivity configuration of only two exploration wellbores as the main input data.
... Sui et al., 2019b) as these wells are already existing at deep depth (no drilling cost) and their available temperature is high enough (150 • C) that can be used in binary or dry cycle technologies. Several other studies in open literature proposed using geothermal energy extracted from abandoned oil wells for various applications including electricity generation (He et al., 2018;Noorollahi et al., 2015;Wang et al., 2020Wang et al., , 2018Zare and Rostamnejad Takleh, 2020), water desalination (Kiaghadi et al., 2017;Noorollahi et al., 2017b), heating (Li et al., 2019;Nian and Cheng, 2018a), and cooling (Kharseh et al., 2015b;Siddiqui et al., 2019;Yilmaz, 2017). In 2014, Cheng et al. (Cheng et al., 2014a) studied the power generation from AOWs using organic Rankin cycle (ORC) with a particular focus on the influences of the working fluids on the power generation efficiency. ...
This study investigates the potential of using the geothermal energy from abandoned oils in a novel three-loop system; geothermal, power and cooling loops to produce cooling effect. The geothermal loop drives the power and cooling loops of a thermo-mechanical refrigeration (TMR) system consisting of expander-compressor units (ECUs). The system advantages lie in its simple, flexible, and low-cost design as well as in its ability to be driven by a low-temperature heat source (as low as 60 • C). To evaluate the performance of the system, comprehensive models are developed including transient model for the abandoned oil well (geothermal loop) in spatial and time domains and thermodynamic and optimization models for the entire three-loop system. The effects of the temperature variation of the geofluid over operation time, the working fluids, the high pressure and the temperatures of the heat source and sink are investigated. Results show that at realistic and conservative conditions, the geofluid temperature considerably decreases for the first four months of operation (by an average of 30 • C) and tends to be constant after half a year of operation. However, the geofluid temperature still high enough to drive the proposed geothermal TMR system over the full operation period. Among 43 investigated refrigerants, R1234ze(E) has higher efficiency, lower Pumping Work Ratio (PWR), and requires a smaller size of the heat exchangers. Using the genetic algorithm optimization method with R1234ze(E) as working fluid in both power and cooling loops, a maximum power loop efficiency of 6.3% and COP of 5.3 were obtained at a high pressure of 29 bar (in the power loop) with minimal expander diameter of 64, compressor diameter of 171 mm, and 18 expander-compressor units.
