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3.1 Scope and Approach Recoverable EGS Resource Estimates If we limit our calculation of stored thermal energy in place to a depth of 10 km beneath the land area of the United States, then the amount of thermal energy in the crust is so large (about 14 million quads) that we can view it as sustainable (see Chapter 2, Table A.2.1). Even if we were to use it to provide all the primary energy consumed in the United States, we still would be depleting only a tiny 33 fraction of it. The depletion aspect requires additional exploration and detail. Geothermal is often classified as a renewable resource, but the time scale for its renewablilty is certainly longer than for solar, wind, or biomass energy, which have daily and annual cycles. For instance, a fractured EGS reservoir is cooled significantly during heatmining operations over its normal project life of about 20 to 30 years, as a result of heatmining operations. If the reservoir was abandoned at that point, the rock would recover to its initial temperature in 100 years or less (Armstead and Tester, 1987; and Elsworth, 1989 and 1990). With the time for full recovery of a former active reservoir approaching a century, one might not categorize geothermal heat mining as a sustainable energy resource. However, as long as the fraction of stored heat that is being mined in any year is a small fraction (<10%) of the total assessable resource base, geothermal can be treated as fully renewable and, therefore, a sustainable resource. Given that the U.S. geothermal resource base is about 14 million EJ, we would always be utilizing much less than 10% annually of the total thermal energy, even if all of our primary energy came from geothermal resources. Chapter 2 characterized the EGS resource primarily by depth and temperature. In some regions, the EGS resource is available at high temperatures at shallow depths making energy recovery easier and less costly than other lowergrade regions, where deeper drilling is needed to reach useful rock temperatures. Another positive attribute of EGS for the long term will be the ability to locate heat mining operations near end users. For example, an EGS site being developed in Switzerland is within the city limits of Basel. However, a significant portion of the resource will be inaccessible from the surface, due to its location under state and national parks, wilderness, military sites, or very high elevations. In addition, developed areas will not be suitable for EGS development, including major roads and utility corridors, airports, urban areas, and others. As it turns out, these inaccessible areas amount to only a small fraction of the total, leaving a significant amount of the stored thermal energy contained in accessible regions available for capture and utilization on the surface. As discussed in Chapter 7, there are several factors that control the amount of the resource that can be recovered as heat or converted into electricity. These include the initial rock temperature and the maximum temperature drop that can be tolerated by the heat/power plant (i.e., the reservoir abandonment temperature), the volume of rock that can be accessed and stimulated, the active or effective heatexchange area (controlled by the length, width, and spacing of the existing and stimulated fractures), and the flow rate of the water through the connected fractures (controlled by the permeability and the pattern of the injectors and producers) (Armstead and Tester, 1987; Ellsworth, 1989; and Sanyal and Butler, 2005). This chapter provides a rationale and methodology for estimating the amount of useful energy that could be recovered from Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) over the range of accessible depths and temperatures that exist in the United States. As discussed in Chapter 2, the EGS resource base is defined as the total thermal energy in place in the Earth’s crust to the depth that we can reach with current technology. Thus, the estimated resource base for EGS presented in Chapter 2 is a measure of the total contained energy. Here, we want to estimate what fraction of this amount is recoverable. Chapter 3PDF Image | Recoverable EGS
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