The SiGS project goal is to extend the understanding of superheated and supercritical geothermal resources and their response to engineering operations by combining tailored mathematical and numerical modeling with field observations.
The study of energy production from superheated and supercritical conditions entails understanding a complex interaction between fluid flow, transport of energy and chemical species, and deformation of the host rock due to changes in temperature and fluid pressure. The physical takes place in the rock proper, in networks of fractures within the rock, and on the rock-fracture interface. The fractures are not static, but can open and close, or even propagate. This combination of complex and coupled physics with geometric structures (the fracture network) is extremely difficult to represent in simulation tools, and as a result, our ability to understand key processes in geothermal fields suffers.
Research tasks within the SiGS project are:
- Development of mathematical models for the fully coupled thermo-chemical-hydro-mechanical processes for fractured geothermal reservoirs.
- Development of robust and simulation techniques for the models, and implementation of the models into the simulation tool PorePy, developed at he University of Bergen.
In practice, this requires a combination of mathemactical modeling, numerical methods including discretization methods and solvers, implementation and simulation.