Deriving Geothermal Reservoir Properties from Tomographic Models

Abstract: The effectiveness of the heat transfer in a geothermal reservoir strongly depends on its temperature, pressure and rock type. A porous and fractured rock is essential to provide a hot fluid circulation to a geothermal power plant. Velocity anomalies in seismic tomography may relate to the location of a fluid reservoir, hydrothermal systems, and possible heat sources. However, the subsurface properties like porosity, fracture density, and fluid state (e.g liquid, gas or supercritical fluid) cannot be inferred directly using seismic tomography. The inversion of seismic data can be combined with an effective medium model (EMM) to investigate such rock and subsurface properties. In the present study, we implement an EMM involving elastic rock properties and the following descriptions of inclusions: pore porosity, fracture density, fracture aspect ratio, fracture porosity, and liquid ratio. The chosen EMM was reproduced from the work of Adelinet et al. (2011a) and Adelinet (2010). Tomographic results were inverted for the same geographic area (Krysuvik in Iceland) in order to validate our method and to confirm the presence of the supercritical fluid reservoir. We re-evaluate the assumptions and constraining parameters choice of the inverse model used in Adelinet et al. (2011a) and Adelinet (2010), in order to 1) get a better understanding of the underlying problems, 2) investigate the sensitivity of the results based on the constraining parameters, 3) produce suitable workflows, and 4) build an adaptive method for geothermal exploration in different areas. The newly implemented method found the same qualitative results in Krysuvik as Adelinet et al. (2011a). Namely, at ≈ 6.5 km depth both values of fracture density and of liquid ratio are consistent with hydraulic fracturing and a probable super-critical fluid reservoir. Afterwards, the method was applied to the Hengill volcanic complex. Fracture density and liquid ratio values similar to those observed at Krysuvik and associated to a geothermal reservoir were obtained at Hengill at the exact location of existing production sites. Our results also showed limitations of initial assumptions and could contribute to improve the method. This study could be a starting point to build a more sophisticated tool for geothermal exploration.