Wednesday, May 21, 2014

Technology:

Geothermal Research Highlights Spring 2014 (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory)


Three papers (Spycher et al., Peiffer et al., and Wanner et al.) by the same team of geochemists from the Earth Sciences Division (ESD) of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory are to appear in the July 2014 issue of Geothermics.

These three papers all relate to solute geothermometry and focus on the development, testing, and application of a new approach to compute deep reservoir temperatures. This approach uses numerical optimization and a newly developed computer program to process full water-chemical analyses from multiple thermal springs and wells. 

The first paper (Spycher et al., 2014) details the geothermometry approach and newly developed geothermometry software. In the second paper (Peiffer et al. 2014), the approach is applied to the Dixie Valley geothermal system in Nevada. In the third paper (Wanner et al., 2014), a reactive-transport model of Dixie Valley is applied to evaluate deep fluid and thermal flow patterns at this site, as well as to test various solute geothermometry methods using synthetic water compositions from a modeled spring.