Pulse Testing for Monitoring the Thermal Front in Aquifer Thermal Energy Storage

Abstract

Seasonal storage of heat in shallow aquifers for increasing the efficiency of geothermal energy systems requires a proper monitoring strategy. We expanded our earlier work on harmonic pulse testing (HPT) to incorporate the effect of a temperature front moving into the reservoir due to injection of hot (or cold) water. Our analytical solutions were applied to monitor the thermal front evolution in a doublet system. Thermal front position and average temperature around the injector could indeed be characterized through the application of the proposed HPT interpretation. Additional analyses were carried out adding noise to evaluate the robustness of the interpretation methodology.