Experimental Investigation of Fracture Aperture Evolution Under Coupled Thermo-Hydro-Mechanical-Chemical Processes Encountered in Enhanced Geyhermal Systems

Abstract:

The success and sustainability of an Enhance Gethermal System (EGS) reservoir depends strongly on the permeability of its fracture network. Several processes affect the permeability of the system, including thermo, hydro, mechanical and chemical processes. These processes interact with one another temporally and contribute to the evolution of permeability within an EGS reservoir during normal operation. This study attempts to experimentally investigate the fracture aperture evolution under coupled processes in EGS reservoir. Granite specimens extracted from the Barre Granite quarry (Barre, Vermont) were used in the experiments. The artificially fractured core rock specimens were scanned using X-Ray Micro- CT and steady-state flow-through experiments were performed on the fractured specimens using high pressure/temperature servo-hydraulic operated system (Autolab 1500). The rock specimens were subjected to 30 MPa of confining pressure and 5 MPa of static internal pore pressure and Temperature of 120 °C. After 24 hours of equilibration, the flow of deionized water was initiated through the artificial fracture at a rate of 0.000351 ml/min for 40 days, during which effluent samples were collected for ICP-MS analysis and fracture permeability was monitored using upstream and downstream pore pressures. Upon termination of the experiments, the core rocks were scanned again to investigate the changes in fracture aperture and dissolution/precipitation of minerals at different sections of the core rock. The experimental results demonstrated that fracture surface asperities initially prop the fracture open, but upon introduction to deionized water, the asperities dissolve and the fracture aperture closes, resulting in decreased permeability. In most experiments, fracture aperture decreased steadily with the presumed dissolution of fracture surface asperities up to 30 days and then a decrease of upstream pore pressure was observed, which might be explained by etching (dissolution paths) on the fracture surface, resulting in more direct routes for water flow and a reduction in upstream/downstream pressure differential. This was further investigated and confirmed by results of ICP-MS analysis on the influent/effluent solutions and comparing the pre and post-test CT images of the core specimens.