GEMSToolbox: A novel modelling tool for rapid screening of mines for geothermal heat extraction

Julien Mouli-Castillo, Jeroen van Hunen, Michael MacKenzie, Thomas Sear and Charlotte Adams

Applied Energy, 2024, vol. 360, issue C, No S0306261924001697

Abstract: Mine water geothermal heat extraction is a promising technology to provide long-term, zero carbon heating in former coal mining regions. However to allow the technology to develop further, modelling tools which are faster than 3D coupled-process simulators and more site specific than analytical solutions need to be developed. A novel modelling tool, GEMSToolbox, was designed for assessing the feasibility of disused and flooded mine workings for such geothermal heat extraction. The basis of GEMSToolbox is built upon tested, computationally efficient modelling methods, and combines efficient solvers for water flow through the mine workings with fast solution methods for heat exchange between the water in the mine galleries and the surrounding rock mass. It expands and improves on these methods by (1) allowing for arbitrarily complex multi-seam mine geometries, and (2) addressing potential thermal interaction between nearby mine galleries using a novel geometric weighting technique. Fast calculation allows for wide parameter investigation studies that is required given the often uncertain state of disused mine systems. This makes the tool ideally suitable for the feasibility stage of a project for which site-specific yet computationally efficient alternative tools are currently lacking. The tool is demonstrated on a case study using plans from a real mine system and shows how it can be used to evaluate the long-term thermal performance of a mine water geothermal heat scheme.

Keywords: Geothermal; Renewable heat; Mine water; Modelling (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306261924001697
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:appene:v:360:y:2024:i:c:s0306261924001697

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/405891/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... 405891/bibliographic

DOI: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2024.122786

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Energy is currently edited by J. Yan

More articles in Applied Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().