Continuously rising oil and gas prizes and the increase of the greenhouse gas CO2 call attention to the need for more sustainable energy resources. One of the sustainable energy resources is the heat that is stored in the earth, which is an inexhaustible source of energy and could be used almost anywhere in the world.
Several strategies have been developed to explore the heat from shallow (< 400 m) and deep (> 400 m) geothermal systems. Shallow geothermal systems extract the heat using borehole heat exchangers (BHE) and/or store the heat in shallow aquifer systems. In contrast, the deep geothermal energy, which is used for district heating and/or electricity production, employs the Hot Dry Rock (HDR) method or the Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) respectively. In deep geothermal systems density-driven convections occur. Hence, density-driven flow and deep circulations of geofluids, which can lead to transport of heat and solutes over larger spatial scales, is vital in understanding and exploring deep geothermal energy systems.
This session seeks contributions of the following fields: (1) shallow geothermal energy and (2) deep geothermal energy in porous and fractured rock systems including current international and national geothermal projects, reservoir characterisation (e.g. thermal response tests, hydraulic well tests, fractured rock characterisation, monitoring microseismicity, etc.), new drilling techniques, reservoir stimulation techniques (hydraulic and chemical), environmental and economical risk assessments of geothermal energy systems, conceptual and numerical models simulating geothermal systems and heat exploration techniques (e.g. borehole heat exchangers). Thus the session provides an overview of the current and future research on shallow and deep geothermal energy systems.