Simulation study of supercritical carbon dioxide jet fracturing for carbonate geothermal reservoir based on fluid-thermo-mechanical coupling model

Geothermal energy is a kind of renewable, sustainable and clean energy resource. Geothermal energy is abundant in carbonate reservoirs. However, low matrix permeability limits its exploitation. The super-critical carbon dioxide (SC-CO2) jet fracturing is expected to efficiently stimulate the carbonate geothermal reservoirs and achieve the storage of CO2 simultaneously. In this paper, we established a transient seepage and fluid-thermo-mechanical coupled model to analyze the impact performance of SC-CO2 jet fracturing. The mesh-based parallel code coupling interface was employed to couple the fluid and solid domains by exchanging the data through the mesh interface. The physical properties change of SC-CO2 with temperature were considered in the numerical model. Results showed that SC-CO2 jet frac -turing is superior to water-jet fracturing with respect to jetting velocity, particle trajectory and pene-trability. Besides, stress distribution on the carbonate rock showed that the tensile and shear failure would more easily occur by SC-CO2 jet than that by water jet. Moreover, pressure and temperature control the jet field and seepage field of SC-CO2 simultaneously. Increasing the jet temperature can effectively enhance the impingement effect and seepage process by decreasing the viscosity and density of SC-CO2. The key findings are expected to provide a theoretical basis and design reference for applying SC-CO2 jet fracturing in carbonate geothermal reservoirs.& COPY; 2022 The Authors. Publishing services by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of KeAi Communications Co. Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/ 4.0/).