Simulation achievement of lab-scale formations with high geotemperature gradient

The heat exchange between geothermal wells and surrounding formations is important to the heat production of geothermal wells. Due to the difficulty in arranging measurement points around geothermal wells in real engineering, it is hard to verify the results of geothermal reservoir modelling, thereby verify the modelling results. Therefore, geothermal wells are only considered as source/sink in most of the previous geothermal reservoir modeling, and the coupled flow and heat transfer between the geothermal fluid and the reservoir is not considered. In contrast, lab-scale experiments are convenient to arrange the measurement points, and the experimental results can verify the coupled geothermal reservoir-wellbore numerical model. However, how to achieve the lab-scale formations with geotemperature gradients is the key issue, and there are no similar studies yet. In this paper, based on the basic principles of heat transfer, a lab-scale simulated formation with high geotemperature gradient is quickly achieved. By determining the geometric size of the simulated geothermal reservoir and caprock, selecting the filled porous media and a simulated reservoir with constant temperature, a simulated formation with high geotemperature gradient is designed. Through the layered heating and boundary dynamic thermal supplementation method, the linear temperature distribution of the simulated formation at the reservoir temperature of 60 °C, 65 °C and 70 °C, respectively, are achieved. The relative error between the numerical simulation obtained by the finite volume method and the experimental results is within the range of ±2.5%, indicating that the simulated and experimental results are in good agreement, which can provide experimental conditions for the coupled reservoir - wellbore heat transfer experiment. The simulated formation system designed and established in this paper can provide experimental conditions for the reservoir-wellbore heat transfer experiment, and then verify the developing numerical software of coupling the reservoir-wellbore flow and heat transfer.