{"id":425,"date":"2008-04-28T06:00:25","date_gmt":"2008-04-28T13:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/montaraventures.com\/energy\/?p=425"},"modified":"2008-04-27T21:02:19","modified_gmt":"2008-04-28T04:02:19","slug":"hfr-its-hot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/energy\/?p=425","title":{"rendered":"HFR, It’s Hot"},"content":{"rendered":"
Geodynamics Test Site in Cooper Basin
\"Cooper
Attribution: Geodynamics<\/small><\/center><\/div>\n

For those of you not in the know, HFR is hot fractured rock. The latest incarnation of HDR (hot dry rock) or EGS (enhanced geothermal system.) Pioneered in the early 1970’s at the Fenton Hill, New Mexico site, HDR is the process of introducing water into a known hot rock bed, inducing fractures in that rock bed to create a reservoir, and then harvesting the steam that results from the contact between the super hot rocks and the water through production wells.
\n
\nThe Fenton Hill project was shut down years ago, but the concept has taken on new life in Australia where no fewer than 32 companies are now working in the Cooper Basin to find a way to mine the heat, convert it to electric power, and transmit it to consumers.
\n
\nHere in the US, the HFR et al view was featured prominently in an exhaustive report assembled by MIT and published last year<\/a> stating that if commercial drilling could cost effectively reach the 10km depth, over 100,000MWe of geothermal electricity generation would be accessible to harvest. Australia though, is really taking this to heart as the Cooper Basin is an enormous, known hot granite area with temperatures in excess of 250C at 4km depth. Also, the basin has a “cap rock” geology, meaning that once a system is stimulated, the steam won’t leak to the surface, it needs a clear path, the kind that is created by drilling a production well.<\/p>\n

Anatomy of Habanero 3
\"Anatomy
Attribution: Geodynamics<\/small><\/center><\/div>\n

\nGeodynamics, Limited<\/a> is a leader in working HFR project toward commercial viability and operation. To date, Geodynamics has drilled three deep wells, Habanero 1, 2, and 3 to depths of over 4km. Recently the company announced that it had been able to successfully inject water into the reservoir, increase the fracture size, and produce steam at pressures of over 14MPa (~2,000 psi) and flow rates of 27kg\/second. This is sufficient to supply their 1MWe test harvest plant planned for installation and operation this year.
\n
\nThe next step for Geodynamics is to drill 9 wells (4 injection and 5 production) to supply a 50MWe electricity generation facility and advance the transmission projects to bring the power to market. Finally, the company plans to scale up by adding nine more 50MWe facilities, bringing the project’s total output to 500MWe by 2016.
\n
\nWhile this is a great vision and by all accounts, Geodynamics and others are making progress toward realizing the vision, there are challenges and risks. One of the biggest challenges and risks has to do with “connectivity” – which means, when water is injected into the reservoir, is the steam from the injected water coming back out? And if so, how much of the injected water is being recovered as usable steam? These fractures aren’t highly controllable and thus in most HFR projects there is a significant shortfall between mass of injected fluid and mass of recovered steam.
\n
\nAlso, in this area of Australia, water is a scarce resource. Since the reservoirs that do exist in the rock naturally are not of production quality and there is little chance of refresh, the gamble is on the water in a relatively shallow aquifer holding out while Geodynamics and other companies compete for the water resource.
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\nEven with the challenges and risks, this is an exciting and vital segment of the geothermal industry.
\n
\nHT: Bruce Wilcox
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Geodynamics Test Site in Cooper BasinAttribution: Geodynamics For those of you not in the know, HFR is hot fractured rock. The latest incarnation of HDR (hot dry rock) or EGS (enhanced geothermal system.) Pioneered in the early 1970’s at the Fenton Hill, New Mexico site, HDR is the process of introducing water into a known […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2gI6x-6R","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/energy\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/energy\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/energy\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/energy\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/energy\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/energy\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/energy\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/energy\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/energy\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}