Lab Work

Colder reinjection

Mobile ORC demonstration

Name: Soultz power plant
Location: Soultz-sous-Forêts (France)
Project status: In exploitation from mid 2016
Owner: GEIE Exploitation Minière de la Chaleur
Operator: ES-Géothermie (ESG)
MEET Partner in contact with site: ESG

Key figures
3 wells drilled from 1995 to 2004 @ 3900 then 5000m deep
Year of comissionning: 2011
Production temperature 150°C at 30kg/s with an installed capacity of 1.7MWe
Capacity in term of housing unit equivalent and CO2 avoided with MEET: 30 tons/year for electricity or 900 tons/year for heat
Potential capacity added by MEET: from 60 to 80 kWe or 2MW thermal

Site description
The Soultz site produces a geothermal brine from a fractured granite. It produces 1.7MWe gross power via an Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) unit.

Within the MEET project this demo-site will be used to demonstrate colder reinjection from 70 to 40°C. The additional calories will be valorized through an innovative electricity production technology consisting in a mobile ORC unit.

The Soultz-sous-Forêts binary geothermal plant (Source: GEIE)

To know more

Website of demo-site: geopowr.es.fr
Baujard C., Genter A., Cuenot N., Mouchot J., Maurer V., Hehn R., Ravier G., Seibel O., Vidal J., (2018). Experience from a successful soft stimulation and operational feedback after 2 years of geothermal power and heat production in Rittershoffen and Soultz-sous-Forêts plants (Alsace, France), Geothermal Resource Council, GRC2018, October 14-17, Reno, Nevada, USA..

The Soultz site is located in the Upper Rhine Graben. It produces a geothermal brine with a high salt content (100g/L) discharged from a Paleozoic monzogranite covered by a thick sedimentary layers made of Tertiary and Secondary formations. The monzogranite is highly fractured and shows hydrothermally altered and fractured zones bearing the geothermal brine.
With the MEET project, innovative seismic treatments using a full wave inversion of former multi-offset VSP will improve the structural characterization of faults around the wells and will contribute to a better understanding of the geothermal water pathways.

The Soultz-sous-Forêts well architecture 
and a hydrothermally altered granitic Soultz core sample taken at 1675 m

To know more

Genter A., Evans K.F., Cuenot N., Fritsch D., Sanjuan B., (2010). Contribution of the exploration of deep crystalline fractured reservoir of Soultz to the knowledge of Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS). C.R. Geoscience, 342, 502-516.
Ledesert B., Berger G., Meunier A., Genter A., Bouchet A., (1999). Diagenetic-type reactions related to hydrothermal alteration in the Soultz-sous-Forêts granite, France, Eur. J. Miner., Vol. 11, 731-741.

The Soultz site produces with a line shaft pump, a geothermal fluid at 150°C which is fully reinjected in the granite reservoir at 70°C. Thanks to an ORC unit, the site produces 1.7MWe and about 11MW thermal.
In the framework of MEET, additional electricity will be generated at low temperature with a mobile ORC unit. In surface equipment, corrosion and scaling phenomena will be investigated in order to find adequate metallurgy, exploitation conditions and inhibitors to ensure a sustainable geothermal exploitation. In parallel, the impact of cold reinjection in the deep-seated granite will be monitored using a seismological, a piezometric network and a fiber optic deployed in a observation well for detecting variationsof pressure and temperature in the reservoir.

MEET heat exchanger to test corrosion effect on different metallurgies

To know more

Mouchot J., Cuenot N., Bosia C., Genter A., Ravier G., Scheiber J., (2018). First year of operation from EGS geothermal plants in Alsace, France: scaling issues, Stanford Geothermal Workshop 2018, Stanford, California, USA, 12-14 February 2018.
Trullenque G., Genter A., Leiss B., Wagner B., Bouchet R., Leoutre E., Malnar B., Bär K., Rajšl I., (2018) Upscaling of EGS systems in different geological conditions: a European perspective, Stanford Geothermal Workshop 2018, Stanford, California, USA, 12-14 February 2018.