Geothermal

Are deep closed-loop geothermal systems doomed?

“Claims of universal geographical scalability of Closed Loop Geothermal Systems (CLGS) in power generation at competi­tive prices are not supported by simulation results,” is what the authors conclude in a…

Extract and re-inject water, from the same well

The city of Munich is blessed with a very permeable succes­sion of Quaternary sediments that enables a high and con­sistent supply of groundwater flow. As such, there is great potential…

Building a reservoir model for a geothermal field

The first well in the Ohaaki geothermal field in New Zealand was drilled in 1965. However, it lasted until 1989 before power production really started, even though large-scale testing of…

The “nugget effect” in geothermal exploration

“We see permeabilities of 10 Darcy and above 15 % porosity, easily,” says Alan Bischoff. Alan is associate pro­fessor of geoenergy at the University of Turku in Finland. In that…

An exciting drilling campaign in exciting geology

Did EBN set a trend? That’s to be seen, but the four-well geothermal drilling campaign the Croatian Hydrocarbon Agency recently em­barked on to prove the potential of an equal number…

Bacterial life is everywhere in the subsurface

Elsemiek Croese. Photography: Elsemiek Croese private archive. “Let’s put it this way,” says Elsemiek Croese from Microbial Analysis, “one of the key ingredients of life is water. In that light,…