Geomechanical modelling of a Geothermal reservoir in Tanzania

Abstract

Countries that are favored by being situated within the East African Rift System, Tanzania is among them. Geothermal energy is a potential renewable source that should be taken into account in Tanzania's energy mix. Computational Fluid Dynamic (Mathematical modeling and numerical simulation) are taking into account for predicting of geothermal reservoir. Preliminary, geothermal survey studies have been done in Tanzania. However, the available data is inadequate partly because of limitations in traditional measurements and visualization techniques for the geothermal reservoirs located deep underground. This paper presents computational fluid dynamics (CFD) technique which has been employed to address the limitations by giving an insight into these complex flows that are often difficult, expensive or impossible to study using traditional techniques. The discretized Euler-Eulerian equations are solved in Fluent 12 software for the conservation of mass, momentum, energy and species. The predicted results indicate that thermodynamic properties such as the rate of temperature and pressure drop along the fractured porous rock (hole path) in the concerned study area were 0.02°C per meter and 0.025 bar per meter, respectively. Further, the predicted steam quality at outlet is 0.9.