Willems, C. J.L. , Cheng, C., Watson, S. M., Minto, J., Williams, A., Walls, D., Milsch, H., Burnside, N. M. and Westaway, R. (2021) Permeability and mineralogy of the Újfalu Formation, Hungary, from production tests and experimental rock characterization: implications for geothermal heat projects. Energies, 14(14), 4332. (doi: 10.3390/en14144332)
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Abstract
Hundreds of geothermal wells have been drilled in Hungary to exploit Pannonian Basin sandstones for district heating, agriculture, and industrial heating projects. Most of these sites suffer from reinjection issues, limiting efficient use of this vast geothermal resource and imposing significant extra costs for the required frequent workovers and maintenance. To better understand the cause of this issue requires details of reservoir rock porosity, permeability, and mineralogy. However, publicly available data for the properties of reservoir rocks at geothermal project sites in Hungary is typically very limited, because these projects often omit or limit data acquisition. Many hydrocarbon wells in the same rocks are more extensively documented, but their core, log, or production data are typically decades old and unavailable in the public domain. Furthermore, because many Pannonian sandstone formations are poorly consolidated, coring was always limited and the collected core often unsuitable for conventional analysis, only small remnant fragments typically being available from legacy hydrocarbon wells. This study aims to reduce this data gap and to showcase methods to derive reservoir properties without using core for flow experiments. The methods are thin-section analysis, XRD analysis and mercury intrusion porosimetry, and X-CT scanning followed by numerical flow simulation. We validate our results using permeability data from conventional production testing, demonstrating the effectiveness of our method for detailed reservoir characterization and to better constrain the lateral variation in reservoir properties across the Pannonian Basin. By eliminating the need for expensive bespoke coring to obtain reservoir properties, such analysis will contribute to reducing the capital cost of developing geothermal energy projects, thus facilitating decarbonization of global energy supply.
| Item Type: | Articles |
|---|---|
| Status: | Published |
| Refereed: | Yes |
| Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: | Williams, Aislinn and Willems, Dr Cees and Walls, Mr David and Westaway, Dr Robert and Burnside, Dr Neil and Watson, Mr Sean |
| Creator Roles: | Willems, C. J.L.Validation, Data curation, Writing – original draft, Visualization Watson, S. M.Formal analysis, Investigation Williams, A.Formal analysis, Investigation Walls, D.Formal analysis, Investigation Burnside, N. M.Supervision, Project administration Westaway, R.Validation, Writing – review and editing, Visualization, Supervision, Project administration, Funding acquisition |
| Authors: | Willems, C. J.L., Cheng, C., Watson, S. M., Minto, J., Williams, A., Walls, D., Milsch, H., Burnside, N. M., and Westaway, R. |
| College/School: | College of Science and Engineering College of Science and Engineering > School of Engineering College of Science and Engineering > School of Engineering > Infrastructure and Environment College of Science and Engineering > School of Engineering > Systems Power and Energy College of Science and Engineering > School of Geographical and Earth Sciences |
| Journal Name: | Energies |
| Publisher: | MDPI |
| ISSN: | 1996-1073 |
| ISSN (Online): | 1996-1073 |
| Published Online: | 18 July 2021 |
| Copyright Holders: | Copyright © 2021 by the authors. |
| First Published: | First published in Energies 14(14):4332 |
| Publisher Policy: | Reproduced under a Creative Commons Licence |
| Data DOI: | 10.5525/gla.researchdata.1140 |
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