An investigation on hydraulic fracturing characteristics in granite geothermal reservoir

Geothermal energy has been widely proposed as a potential renewable energy to replace traditional fossil fuel energy. Deep buried geothermal reservoirs are usually called Hot Dry Rock (HDR) or Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS). Hot dry rock (HDR) reservoirs are the main geothermal energy resources, and usually consist of low-permeability hard granite without fluid. Developing HDR requires water cyclically flowing between injection and production wells to extract heat energy. Hydraulic fracturing, as a key reservoir stimulation technology, can create the path of fluid cyclically flowing. Although hydraulic fracturing in HDR formations has attracted more and more attention these years, large-size HDR formation environment is difficult to establish in laboratory and large granite samples are difficult to crack because of their high toughness and strength, the reservoir stimulation characteristics in this hard granite have not been thoroughly addressed by the researchers and the hydraulic induced fracture morphology has yet remained unnoticed. To advance this technology development, a true triaxial hydraulic fracturing apparatus with high temperature heated system has been developed by Jilin University to simulate the real HDR environment, and this paper investigated HDR geothermal reservoir stimulation characteristics in large-size granite under different injection flow rates, temperatures and confining stresses conditions. The granite samples were collected form Gonghe Basin where the Chinese first EGS field operation will be built. Results showed that these laboratorial conditions affected hydraulic fracturing characteristics, breakdown pressures increased with the increase of injection flow rate and confining stresses, decreased with the increase of temperatures. Numerical simulations were conducted to model the laboratory tests. These results can provide some reasonable advice for implementing reservoir stimulations on the application of field-scale HDR operation.