Geothermal Energy Production Coupled with CCS: a Field Demonstration at the SECARB Cranfield Site, Cranfield, Mississippi, USA.

Abstract: A major global research and development effort is underway to commercialize carbon capture and storage (CCS) as a method to mitigate climate change. Recent studies have shown the potential to couple CCS with geothermal energy extraction using supercritical CO₂ (ScCO₂) as the working fluid. In a geothermal reservoir, the working fluid produces electricity as a byproduct of the CCS process by mining heat out of a reservoir as it is circulated between injector and producer wells. While ScCO₂ has lower heat capacity than water, its lower viscosity more than compensates by providing for greater fluid mobility. Furthermore, CO₂ exhibits high expansivity and compressibility, which can both help reduce parasitic loads in fluid cycling. Given the high capital costs for developing the deep well infrastructure for geologic storage of CO₂, the potential to simultaneously produce geothermal energy is an attractive method to offset some of the costs and added energy requirements for separating and transporting the waste CO₂ stream. We present here the preliminary design and reservoir engineering associated with the development of direct-fired turbomachinery for pilot-scale deployment at the SECARB Cranfield Phase III CO₂ Storage Project, in Cranfield, Mississippi, U.S.A. The pilot-scale deployment leverages the prior investment in the Cranfield Phase III research site, providing the first ever opportunity to acquire combined CO₂ storage/geothermal energy extraction data necessary to address the uncertainties involved in this novel technique. At the SECARB Cranfield Site, our target reservoir, the Tuscaloosa Formation, lies at a depth of 3.0km, and an initial temperature of 127°C. A CO₂ injector well and two existing observation wells are ideally suited for establishing a CO₂ thermosiphon and monitoring the thermal and pressure evolution of the well-pair on a timescale that can help validate coupled models. It is hoped that this initial demonstration on a pre-commercial scale can accelerate commercialization of combined CCS/geothermal energy extraction by removing uncertainties in system modeling. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]