Geothermal Energy Production from Oil/Gas Wells and Application for Building Cooling

Conference · Fri Jan 01 00:00:00 EST 2016

OSTI ID:1330534

Wang, Honggang ^[1]; Liu, Xiaobing ^[2]

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1. Rutgers University
2. ORNL

One significant source of low-temperature geothermal energy is the coproduced hot water from oil/gas field production. In the United States, daily oil production has reached above 8 million barrels in recent years. Considering various conditions of wells, 5-10 times or more water can be coproduced in the range of temperature 120 F to 300 F. Like other geothermal resources, such energy source from oil/gas wells is under-utilized for its typical long distance from consumption sites. Many oil/gas fields, however, are relatively close (less than 10 miles) to consumers around cities. For instance, some petroleum fields in Pennsylvania are only a few miles away from the towns in Pittsburg area and some fields in Texas are quite close to Houston. In this paper, we evaluate geothermal potential from oil/gas wells by conducting numerical simulation and analysis of a fractured oil well in Hastings West field, Texas. The results suggest that hot water can be continuously coproduced from oil wells at a sufficient rate (about 4000 gallons/day from one well) for more than 100 years. Viable use of such geothermal source requires economical transportation of energy to consumers. The recently proposed two-step geothermal absorption (TSGA) system provides a promising energy transport technology that allows large-scale use of geothermal energy from thousands of oil/gas wells.

• Research Organization: Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States). Building Technologies Research and Integration Center (BTRIC)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE
• DOE Contract Number: AC05-00OR22725
• OSTI ID: 1330534
• Resource Relation: Conference: 40th GRC (Geothermal Resource Council ) Annual Meeting, Sacramento, CA, USA, 20161023, 20161026
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English