IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/rensus/v8y2004i3p223-236.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Contribution of fractures to formation and production of geothermal resources

Author

Listed:
  • Hanano, Mineyuki

Abstract

Heat, fractures and fluid are the fundamental elements of geothermal resources. From a different viewpoint, existence of natural hydrothermal convection to form convective geothermal resources, and fluid production from wells, are the important factors for geothermal development. Under this circumstance, fractures play two different roles. One is contribution for the onset of the natural convection in geothermal systems, and the other is contribution as flow paths to connect wells to the reservoir for fluid production. Since the inter-fracture ascending velocity of natural convection in geothermal reservoirs is of the order of 10-8 m/s, fractures from very small to very large permeabilities contribute to the first role. However, in-flow velocity of single-phase liquid within fractures in the vicinity of the well face ranges from 10-1 to 101 m/s for example. Thus, only fractures of very high permeability can contribute to the second role. Therefore, one should always note the roles of fractures when discussing permeability in geothermal reservoirs.

Suggested Citation

  • Hanano, Mineyuki, 2004. "Contribution of fractures to formation and production of geothermal resources," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 8(3), pages 223-236, June.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:rensus:v:8:y:2004:i:3:p:223-236
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364-0321(03)00120-5
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Zhou, Zhou & Jin, Yan & Zeng, Yijin & Zhang, Xudong & Zhou, Jian & Zhuang, Li & Xin, Shunyuan, 2020. "Investigation on fracture creation in hot dry rock geothermal formations of China during hydraulic fracturing," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 153(C), pages 301-313.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:rensus:v:8:y:2004:i:3:p:223-236. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/600126/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.