Apostolos Kantzas

University of Calgary

Conduction and convection as related to geothermal and geoenergy

In geothermal or geoenergy applications the effect of heat conduction was immediately identified.  This is reflected by a continuously increasing literature in thermal conductivity measurements.  We conduct thermal conductivity measurements in materials from granites to soils using samples from different depths under varying saturation and temperature conditions.  We then introduce flow in the samples to account for the effect of convection in thermal dispersivity.  We expect an analog to mass transfer where there is much more information available.  We also seek a representative elementary volume as the initial block for scaling heat transfer using pore level modelling.  Although geothermal and geoenergy have different targets (electricity vs. direct heating), the heat transfer principles are the same.  We are evaluating methods to extract thermal information from logging tools using theoretical relationships between thermal and material properties.  Finally, we couple these findings to COMSOL and CMG models for simulation and scale up.