Thermo-hydraulic Modeling of an Enhanced Geothermal System in the Upper Rhine Graben using MOOSE/TIGER

The research project GeoFaces aims to analyze the thermo-hydraulic-mechanical properties of possible geothermal reservoirs in the Upper Rhine Graben (URG) in SW-Germany / E-France. The scope is the quantification of the fluid circulation along or through faults and fractures under recent geological conditions. This paper concentrates on the joint analysis of different scientific datasets to predict the physical behavior of the Soultz Enhanced geothermal reservoir in terms of thermal conduction and fluid flow. Different data, including temperature, hydraulic and seismic measurements, were evaluated and used as input and calibration parameters and for the definition of the boundary conditions in a numerical fully coupled FE-13-fracture-modeling of the Soultz reservoir with the TIGER application (Gholami Korzani et al. 2019). On the basis of the models created by Sausse et al. (2010) and Held et al. (2014), new simulations were conducted to evaluate and calibrate the long-term behavior of the reservoir with regard to hydraulic and thermal sustainability. This analysis allows for the prediction modeling of the reservoir temperatures under the new economic power plant design of Soultz-sous-Forêts, as well as the sensitivity to changes in the production- and injection-rates and temperatures.