Publications related to Geothermal energy

Performance of energy piles foundation in hot-dominated climate: A case study in Dubai

Lyesse Laloui, Elena Ravera, Sofie Elaine ten Bosch

Energy piles represent an innovative technology that can help provide sustainable geothermal heating or cooling energy for thermal conditioning purposes. In hot-dominated climates, the interest is to inject heat in the ground and extract energy for space-c ...

Pergamon-Elsevier Science Ltd2024

Solar-assisted clean steam generator, a cleaner production approach for sustainable healthcare facilities

Fernando Porté Agel, Mohammad Jamshidmofid, Ahmad Arabkoohsar

Healthcare sector buildings, particularly hospitals, significantly contribute to global energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. Hospitals require a substantial amount of steam, including the essential hygienic or " clean steam, " that is currently ...

Elsevier Sci Ltd2024

Fluid flow through microcracked and fractured granitic reservoirs

Marie Estelle Solange Violay, Lucille Jocelyne Nadine Carbillet, Michael Heap

The permeability of crustal rocks and rock-masses dictates the efficiency of hydrothermal circulation and therefore the productivity of geothermal resources. In this study, we find by monitoring P-wave velocity that thermal microcracking in Lanhélin granit ...

2023

Single-Well Pore Pressure Preconditioning for Enhanced Geothermal System Stimulation

Marie Estelle Solange Violay, Mathias Alexandre David Lebihain, Barnaby Padraig Fryer

The stress state is an important parameter in terms of both earthquake nucleation and rupture. Here, a new stimulation technique is proposed for Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGSs), which have previously been burdened with a number of high-profile incidence ...

2023

Reactivation of variably sealed joints and permeability enhancement in geothermal reservoir rocks

Alexandra Roma Larisa Kushnir, Michael Heap

Hydraulic stimulation of enhanced deep geothermal reservoirs commonly targets pre-existing joint networks with the goal of increasing reservoir permeability. Here, we study the permeability and strength of joint-free and jointed Buntsandstein sandstones fr ...

2023

A fully-coupled highly-parallelized geomechanical simulator for assessing induced seismicity

Jean-François Molinari, Brice Tanguy Alphonse Lecampion, Guillaume Anciaux, Nicolas Richart, Emil Gallyamov

Induced seismicity caused by anthropogenic modification of the subsurface effective stress state has been observed in a number of industrial applications -- from hydrocarbon extraction (e.g., Groningen [1]), drilling waste-water disposal (e.g., [2]) to the ...

2023

Propagation of planar three-dimensional buoyant hydraulic fractures

Andreas Möri

Hydraulic fractures are driven by an internal fluid pressure exceeding the minimum compressive stress, propagating in a direction perpendicular to the latter. This class of tensile fractures has gained interest over the last fifty years due to the developm ...

EPFL2023

Three-dimensional fluid-driven frictional ruptures: theory and applications

Alexis Alejandro Sáez Uribe

Fluid-driven frictional ruptures are important in a broad range of subsurface engineering technologies and natural earthquake-related phenomena. Some examples of subsurface operations where borehole fluid injections can induce frictional slip are deep geot ...

EPFL2023

Bounding the localized to ductile transition in porous rocks: implications for geo-reservoirs

Marie Estelle Solange Violay, Gabriel Gérard Dominique Meyer

Porous rocks have long been the focus of intense research driven by their importance in our society as host to our most essential resources (oil, gas, water, geothermal energy, etc), yet their rheology remains poorly understood. With increasing depth, poro ...

2023

Three-dimensional hydraulic fracture propagation in homogeneous and heterogeneous media

Carlo Peruzzo

Hydraulic fractures are tensile fractures that occur in solid materials due to the natural intrusion or anthropogenic injection of a viscous fluid into a fracture channel. The deliberate creation of hydraulic fractures is part of an industrial technology h ...

EPFL2023

PePTM: An Efficient and Accurate Personalized P2P Learning Algorithm for Home Thermal Modeling

Rachid Guerraoui, Alexandre David Olivier Maurer, Omid Ardakanian

Nowadays, the integration of home automation systems with smart thermostats is a common trend, designed to enhance resident comfort and conserve energy. The introduction of smart thermostats that can run machine learning algorithms has opened the door for ...

MDPI2023

Nonlinear interactions of ion acoustic waves explored using fast imaging decompositions

Fast camera imaging is used to study ion acoustic waves propagating azimuthally in a magnetized plasma column. The high-speed image sequences are analyzed using proper orthogonal decomposition and 2D Fourier transform, allowing to evaluate the assets and d ...

2023

Geomechanics for Energy and the Environment: Current Developments

Lyesse Laloui, Roba Houhou

Geomechanics is advancing our understanding of the multi-physical processes encountered in engineering practices involving energy storage and production and environmental protection for which the characterization of the behavior of relevant materials is es ...

2022

Sources of Primary Electricity Supply

Michael Lehning, Annelen Kahl, Aleksandra Kim

This synthesis report provides an overview of primary electricity supply sources, including power generation potentials and costs as well as the as- sociated environmental burdens of electricity pro- duction in Switzerland. It gives a synthesis of the main ...

ETH Zurich2022

On the scale dependence in the dynamics of frictional rupture: Constant fracture energy versus size-dependent breakdown work

Marie Estelle Solange Violay, François Xavier Thibault Passelègue, Mathias Alexandre David Lebihain, Federica Paglialunga, Fabian Barras

Potential energy stored during the inter-seismic period by tectonic loading around faults is released during earthquakes as radiated energy, frictional dissipation and fracture energy. The latter is of first importance since it is expected to control the n ...

2022

Reduced ech-6 expression attenuates fat-induced lifespan shortening in C. elegans

Richardus Houtkooper, Wen Gao, Yuan Liu

Deregulated energy homeostasis represents a hallmark of aging and results from complex gene-by-environment interactions. Here, we discovered that reducing the expression of the gene ech-6 encoding enoyl-CoA hydratase remitted fat diet-induced deleterious e ...

Nature Portfolio2022

Experimental and numerical investigation of the thermo-mechanical behaviour of an energy sheet pile wall

Lyesse Laloui, Alessandro Francesco Rotta Loria, Marianna Adinolfi

One-of-a-kind experimental and numerical investigation is provided in this paper about energy sheet pile walls: earth retaining structures that embed heat exchanger probes within piles for the exploitation of shallow geothermal energy. The study resorts to ...

2021

Machine learning enhancement of thermal response tests for geothermal potential evaluations at site and regional scales

Lyesse Laloui, Benoît Claude Henri Cousin, Alessandro Francesco Rotta Loria

This study explores and validates a machine learning approach for the practical, effective, and precise prediction of the thermo-physical characteristics that are essential for the analysis and design of shallow geothermal systems, including borehole heat ...

2021

On the effects of fluid pressure variations on rock-mass and fault mechanical behaviour

Corentin Jean-Marie Rémi Noël

In the past 20 years, the growing interest in deep geo-reservoirs for purposes such as carbon storage, waste water disposal, or geothermal energy exploitation have led to large-volume fluid injections into the upper continental crust. These fluid injection ...

EPFL2021

Climate resilient interconnected infrastructure: Co-optimization of energy systems and urban morphology

Kavan Javanroodi, Amarasinghage Tharindu Dasun Perera, Vahid Moussavi Nik

Co-optimization of urban morphology and distributed energy systems is key to curb energy consumption and optimally exploit renewable energy in cities. Currently available optimization techniques focus on either buildings or energy systems, mostly neglectin ...

2021