Steady State Numerical Modelling of Los Humeros Geothermal Field
Author: Scherezade Diaz Martos
Year: 2018
Supervisors: Juliet Newson
Abstract
Los Humeros Geothermal field is localized inside a Pleistocene caldera collapse, near the east limit of the volcanic transmexican belt, in Puebla, 180 Km east from Mexico City. The field was first commissioned by CFE in 1990. and is the Tirth biggest in Mexico with 95 MW capacity installed. The reservoir is estimated occupied an area of more than 400Km2, and temperature and liquid dominated reservoir with low permeability, which seems to be associated with fractures.
A 3D model was created for this thesis project where plots of static temperatures pointed out as La Antigua, a NW-SE fault, as the main source of heat and flow in the system. Based on this conceptualization, a static numerical model was built and run in AUTOUGH2 to corroborate and explain the field. The results shows that La Antigua fault could be the only and main heat and flow source from the field, which is matched with 110 Kg/s of total heat flow, with an specific enthalpy of 1670 KJ/Kg. The model also shows the important role that plays the low permeability reservoir and the clay cap above the field. Both layers needs more attention in future works in the field.