Skip to main content
U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Los Humeros geothermal field, Mexico

Conference ·
OSTI ID:602735
Studies done to evaluate a low permeability-high enthalpy reservoir are reported in this paper. The main mechanism of well production in Los Humeros seems to be strongly related to a fracture network with a low matrix permeability. Under this condition there is a preferential steam flow to wells which is not easy to handle with a primary porosity model even though an element refinement is used. Here, the relative permeabilities are important because the subcooled non-perturbed state is close to the thermodynamic saturation line. Reservoir assessment results using a single porosity model have not been able to reproduce the average production enthalpy measured at the field and seem to be not good enough to represent the heat and transport phenomena occurring there. On the other hand, small scale problems using a double porosity model and similar initial conditions from Los Humeros apparently give a better fit to the production enthalpy. Volumetric assessment of the resource shows a generation capacity of the field of the order of the 120 MWe for an exploitation period of 20 years.
OSTI ID:
602735
Report Number(s):
CONF-971048--
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English