Future Development Of Geothermal Energy
The UN sustainable development goal I selected is the seventh, Affordable and Clean Energy. That is because energy is central to almost every major challenge the world faces today including jobs, security, climate change, food production or increasing incomes. Energy for all is essential. Of all the energy sources, I think geothermal energy is the most realistic, reliable and easiest to achieve.
The first paper is a paper on geothermal development, which is based on a case study at the Qiabuqia geothermal area, northeast Tibetan plateau, China. Authors aim at setting up a concept model of the deep HDR reservoir which can lay the foundations for the future development of the EGS programs. EGS, enhanced Geothermal System, is an essential way to collect heat from deep hot dry rock (HDR), a low-carbon and renewable energy and the researchers can realize the optimal development of reservoirs effectively by studying the long-term production performance of EGS and its sensitivity to different reservoir parameters. They made two temperature measurements on the GR1 borehole, and after the correcting the results, they have got the steady-state logging temperature data. Then they set up a simple three-dimensional thermo-hydro coupled fractured reservoir model considering the temperature influence on the dynamic viscosity, heat capacity, density and thermal conductivity of the injected fluid in order to analyze the heat production potential of the HDR reservoir and research the influence of different parameters on the reservoir productivity. They came up with hypotheses, did experiments to constantly verify their hypotheses and analyze the data covering the effects on the production of injection flow rate, injection fluid temperature, and lateral well spacing.
A combination of 70 kg/s injection flow rate, 60 °C injection temperature, and 500 m lateral well spacing is most ideal. As the situation changes, the conclusions will be different. The energy used is not only, sometimes an approach to assessing energy programs is more important.
The authors of paper 2 to evaluate different renewable energy options by using a method which combines an analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and experts’ feedback. The AHP is a structured technique for organizing and analyzing complex decisions which is widely used in various fields across all over the world. Algeria is now highly dependent on fossil energy, but solar energy in Algeria is abundant making the country be the one with highest solar potential in the Mediterranean region. The wind power is abundant, too. But the highest production capacity for wind power is not concentrated on the summer period as is the case of solar power. However, it can supplement the energy during periods of lower availability particular during the night. Algeria also has geothermal energy but geothermal power potential of the country is evaluated to low. Municipal waste for power generation is a promising option and biomass is allowed to be stored so it is not dependent on weather or climate conditions like other renewable energy sources. Hydropower is also an option.
A research method was designed that required the problem to be used as an AHP structure, and expert feedback was collected to rank these RES alternatives and work out the policy implications of the study. After judging the criteria and making the matrix, solar energy emerges is the best alternative with the highest score (0. 293), and wind energy comes in the second place (0. 217), geothermal and biomass energy are coming in the third and fourth place both with very close scores and finally hydro energy ranked last.
