Publications related to Geothermal power

Enhancing Wind Farm Performance through Axial Induction and Tilt Control: Insights from Wind Tunnel Experiments

Fernando Porté Agel, Guillem Armengol Barcos

Static axial induction control and tilt control are two strategies that have the potential to increase power production in wind farms, mitigating wake effects and increasing the available power for downstream turbines. In this study, wind tunnel experiment ...

MDPI2024

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

Optimal blade pitch control for enhanced vertical-axis wind turbine performance

Karen Ann J Mulleners, Sébastien Le Fouest

Vertical-axis wind turbines are great candidates to enable wind power extraction in urban and off-shore applications. Currently, concerns around turbine efficiency and structural integrity limit their industrial deployment. Flow control can mitigate these ...

Nature Research2024

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Techno-economic and environmental impact assessment of an olive tree pruning waste multiproduct biorefinery

Elia Mercedes Ruiz Pachon

This work focuses on the economic performance and environmental assessment of two biorefinery schemes using 100 t/day of olive tree pruning waste as feedstock. The first scheme is based on a multiproduct biorefinery producing 6363.64 m3/yr of ethanol, 999. ...

ELSEVIER2022

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

Increasing Cellular Network Energy Efficiency for Railway Corridors

Andreas Peter Burg, Ruben Merz, Adrian Schumacher

Modern trains act as Faraday cages making it challenging to provide high cellular data capacities to passengers. A solution is the deployment of linear cells along railway tracks, forming a cellular corridor. To provide a sufficiently high data capacity, m ...

IEEE2022

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

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

Thermodynamic analysis of a tri-generation system using SOFC and HDH desalination unit

Jan Van Herle, Hossein Pourrahmani

The lack of freshwater in many countries pushes authorities to utilize desalination units. Solid Oxide Fuel Cells (SOFC) have shown promising results to provide the power to establish a multi-generation system using hydrogen as a renewable source. In this ...

2021

Probing unconventional performance of fiber resonators: light storage, generation and manipulation

Ivan Cardea

This thesis aims at investigating the performance of figure-9 (figure-of-nine) optical fiber resonators as a practical solution for light storage, light generation and manipulation. The first part of the thesis focuses on a theoretical and experimental stu ...

EPFL2021

Extension of Winkler’s solution to non-isothermal conditions for capturing the behaviour of plane geostructures subjected to thermal and mechanical actions

Lyesse Laloui, Qazim Llabjani, Alessandro Francesco Rotta Loria, Jacopo Zannin

Before this study, no analytical models had been made available for describing the behaviour of plane geostructures subjected to thermal and mechanical actions. This knowledge gap notably represented a limitation for investigations about the behaviour of s ...

2020

Experimental studies of hydro-mechanical couplings in Enhanced Geothermal Reservoirs

Mateo Alejandro Acosta

Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) allow for worldwide geothermal electricity production. They target deep (3-5 km), fractured rock reservoirs whose permeability is artificially increased through hydraulic stimulations (fluid injections). The injections mod ...

EPFL2020