NWT RESEARCH DATABASE

Regions: North Slave Region

Tags: physical sciences, renewable energy, flooding, heat transfer, geothermal potential

Objective(s): To develop reliable approaches to estimate the geothermal potential of flooded mines, using the Con Mine as a field example, and contributing to the development of renewable energy alternatives to the benefit of the Northwest Territories.

Project Description: This licence has been issued for the scientific research application No.4819. The objective of the project is to develop reliable approaches to estimate the geothermal potential of flooded mines, using the Con Mine as a field example, and contributing to the development of renewable energy alternatives to the benefit of the Northwest Territories. The geothermal potential of a flooded mine mostly depends on the amount of water contained in underground workings and the degree at which the water and surrounding host rock can be cooled over the life of the geothermal heating system. The potential of cooling the surrounding host rock is often neglected in simple approaches to estimate the geothermal potential based on mine water volume and temperature. Simple approaches, although offering conservative resource estimates, are useful to rapidly evaluate the potential of such a geothermal resource. Hence, an improved geothermal resource evaluation will be made with a simple energy balance calculation for Con Mine, integrating new components taking into account the volume of host rock surrounding the mine tunnels that can be cooled to supply heating. Then, a complex numerical model will be developed for Con Mine, simulating conductive and convective heat transfer in the system to evaluate the global geothermal potential with accuracy and compare both approaches. The geothermal potential will be evaluated for both geothermal heat pumps and underground thermal energy storage applications. Fieldwork will be conducted to sample the host rock surrounding the Con Mine. Any available core from nearby wells stored at the NWT Geological Materials Storage Facility will also be examined and sampled. Rock samples will be analyzed for thermal conductivity and heat capacity properties in the INRS lab. These data will be used with underground mine and temperature survey data, to develop the improved analytical and numerical models for resource estimates. Annual presentations will be made each year at a Northwest Territories Geological Survey geoscience conference venue. A plain-language annual research summary will be created and posted on the NTGS website. The fieldwork for this study will be conducted from August 22, 2020 to September 15, 2020.