HYDRAULIC FRACTURING OF LOW PERMEABILITY POROUS MEDIA CONTAINING WATER AT VERY HIGH PRESSURES: EFFECT OF SMALL TEMPERATURE VARIATION
JESÚS ALFONSO PUENTE ANGULO1; MARIA LAURA MARTINS-COSTA1; HERALDO S. DA COSTA MATTOS1; JOÃO M. LAREDO DOS REIS1
1 Universidade Federal Fluminense
doi:10.20906/CPS/COB-2015-2562
Resumo
This article studies the possible inducement of hydraulic by small temperature variations in a rigid porous medium with ultra-low permeability, filled with high-pressure water. An experimental set-up was built in which a single pore is simulated as cylinder at very high pressure, maintaining the fluid over its critical temperature and pressure, so that hydraulic fracture may be induced by very small temperature variations, due to the water compressibility. A generalization of the Tait equation of state - able to account for small temperature variations - is proposed to explain that a small increase of temperature in a pore may cause a large pressure variation that eventually leads the solid matrix to failure. Results are in very good agreement with the proposed theoretical predictions.
Palavras-chave: Low permeability porous media; Hydraulic fracture; Heat transfer; Thermodynamics; Enhanced geothermal systems; State law