Case Studies in Thermal Engineering (Jan 2023)
Study on number of geothermal wells based on flowing water and transferring heat in rock mass
Abstract
The scientific selection of the number of pumping wells is directly related to the geothermal exploitation efficiency. In this paper, a new method is proposed to study the influence of different number of pumping wells on the geothermal exploitation efficiency. In order to study the influence mechanism of the number of pumping wells on the temperature of rock mass, based on the conceptual model of geothermal exploitation, 3DEC program was applied to analyze the evolution characteristics of rock mass temperature field and water temperature at the exit of pumping wells under a different number of pumping wells. With the number of pumping wells increasing from 1 to 6, the thermal stacking effect in the same direction of rock mass between the central pumping wells became increasingly strong, which led to the rising outlet water temperature of the pumping wells, the average temperature gradient of pumping wells gradually decreasing by 40.99% or so, and the heat conduction rate of water flow of pumping wells decelerating slowly. And the average temperature gradient of the rock reduced by approximately 47.4%, with the thermal conduction rate of the rock between pumping wells slumping little by little. The time for the model to reach a stable state is shortened.
