Geothermics 28 (1999) 491±506

Hydraulics and well testing of engineered

geothermal reservoirs
Hugh Murphy a,*, Donald Brown b, Reinhard Jung c,
Isao Matsunaga d, Roger Parker e
a
Colorado School of Mines, Golden, CO 80401, USA
b
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87544, USA
c
Bundesanstalt fuÈr Geowissenschaften und Rohsto€e, Hannover, Germany
d
National Institute for Resources and Environment, Tsukuba, Japan
e
CSM Associates, Cornwall, UK
Received 14 November 1998; accepted 16 March 1999

Abstract

In most engineered reservoirs the water to extract the geothermal energy must be
supplied, i.e., forced into the reservoir, rather than merely extracted as is common for
conventional geothermal reservoirs. One operational hydraulic parameter of great interest is
the impedance, which measures how much pressure is required to force water at unit ¯ow
rate through the reservoir. For practical purposes, the impedance should be less than 1
MPa s/l, and economic competitiveness with conventional reservoirs requires values one
tenth as large. Most engineered reservoirs operated to date have met the upper requirement,
and some are approaching the lower. Another parameter of great practical interest is the
water loss rate, i.e. the di€erence between the rates of water injected and produced. Water
losses and impedance are very pressure-dependent, but impedance is inversely soÐhigh
pressure increases water loss, but decreases the impedance. Hence operators may select
strategies to meet their requirements. In some tight rock formations such as those at the
Fenton Hill, USA, reservoir, the water loss rate may be so small that the pressure may be
maximized to reduce impedance and increase energy production. In more permeable rock
formations, the water losses may be quite high, so pressure and energy production may
have to be limited. But in some cases, e.g. the reservoir at Soultz, France, there may be
enough native permeability and water in place that more water actually may be extracted

* Corresponding author. Fax: +1-303-384-2026.

E-mail address: hmurphy@mines.edu (H. Murphy)

0375-6505/99/$20.00 # 1999 CNR. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
PII: S 0 3 7 5 - 6 5 0 5 ( 9 9 ) 0 0 0 2 5 - 5
492 H. Murphy et al. / Geothermics 28 (1999) 491±506

with downhole pumps from the reservoir than is injected. # 1999 CNR. Published by
Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Hot dry rocks; Hot wet rocks; HDR; Reservoir

1. Introduction

The original Hot Dry Rock (HDR) concept developed at Los Alamos National
Laboratory was to create large, arti®cial fractures in a nearly impermeable rock
mass and to use these fractures as an underground heat exchanger. This concept
was then modi®ed by scientists and engineers working at Los Alamos and the
Camborne School of Mines HDR site at Rosemanowes, Cornwall. They
acknowledged the existence of natural joints, or pre-existing fractures, in the rock
and found that these natural fractures could be interconnected and permanently
improved in their transmissibility by hydraulic stimulation (Murphy et al., 1983;
Dreesen et al., 1987; Richards et al., 1994). By hydraulic stimulation is meant the
injection of ¯uid to raise the reservoir pressure suciently to reopen natural
fractures that may have been partially or completely sealed by rock±water
geochemical interaction products, or increasing the permeability of unsealed
natural fractures by further dilating them by simple reduction of con®ning stress
or by shear slippage, or even possibly creating new fractures in the reservoir rock.
A further modi®cation of the HDR de®nition, based upon the work of scientists
at Soultz (Jung, 1992; Jung et al., 1995), is predicated upon the existence of large,
permeable faults or natural fracture zones. These fracture zones are sparsely
distributed, and the chance of intersecting them directly by a borehole is low.
However, arti®cial fractures or stimulated natural fractures will connect to these
permeable discontinuities provided the stimulation process lasts suciently long.
The connection to the permeable zone may be directly via the arti®cial fracture, or
via the arti®cial fracture and some of the natural fractures that comprise the
permeable zone. In the Soultz concept, hydraulic stimulation is only a means to
give access to these highly permeable natural fractures.
The notion of an engineered geothermal reservoir has evolved from the original
Los Alamos concept to the presently accepted spectrum of engineered geothermal
reservoirs. On one end of this continuum is the HDR reservoir, de®ned as an
impervious deep crystalline rock mass containing an array of sealed natural
fractures that are opened by hydraulic stimulation. At the other end is a
previously nonproductive, but open, hydrothermal reservoir that has been
hydraulically stimulated to improve its internal ¯ow characteristics and its
connectivity to existing and newly drilled wellboresÐthe Hot Wet Rock (HWR)
reservoir of Takahashi and Hashida (1992).
 H. Murphy et al. / Geothermics 28 (1999) 491±506 493

2. Well testing and hydraulic parameters

Conventional hydraulic testing, or, as it is commonly referred to in the

petroleum industry, well testing, is dicult to use for engineered HDR/HWR
reservoirs. Horner plots and type curve analysis were developed for constant
permeability reservoirs. This is rarely the case in engineered reservoirs, where it is
usually necessary to operate at high pressure levels so that the fracture
permeability is large enough to reduce the impedance to ¯ow through the
fractures. Under these circumstances, the reservoir permeability and porosity are
strongly pressure-dependent, often varying by several orders of magnitude from
the depressurized state to the operating state.
Hydraulic parameters of engineered reservoirs tend to be of two kinds,
operational parameters and scienti®cally de®ned, hydrological parameters.
Operational parameters are measured directly, whereas the scienti®c parameters
must be inferred from operational parameters, often with the assistance of models.
Key operational parameters are illustrated in Fig. 1 (Hyodo et al.,1996).

Fig. 1. Schematic of a simple Hot Dry Rock power generating system model.
494 H. Murphy et al. / Geothermics 28 (1999) 491±506

2.1. Reservoir impedance

One operational parameter of great interest is the ¯ow impedance, Z, de®ned as

the di€erence between the injection and production wellhead pressures, divided by
the produced ¯ow rate. It is required that Z < 1 MPa s/l if the power required to
pump water through the reservoir is not to exceed a substantial fraction of the
power produced by the reservoir. The Camborne group estimated that Z would
have to be 0.1 MPa s/l for economic development of a commercial reservoir
(Parker, 1988).
As de®ned, the impedance includes that of both wellbores in addition to that of
the reservoir. Usually small, the wellbore impedance is comprised of two parts.
The ®rst is frictional resistance to ¯ow, which can be computed with the usual
pipe friction equations and friction factor-Reynolds number correlations, and is
usually very small. For example, injection and production at 10 l/s in two 0.2 m
diameter wells, 3 km deep, will result in a pressure loss of approximately 40 kPa,
and a well impedance of 4 kPa s/l, which is negligible when compared to
reservoir-alone impedances that are typically 1 MPa s/l. The second part is time-
varying and negative, and stems from density di€erence in the injection and
production wells. When injection ®rst begins the average temperature of both the
injection and production well are equal. But as injection proceeds, the injection
well temperature approaches, for its entire length, that of the surface water
injected, typically 20±408C, while the production well approaches the reservoir
temperature. A deep column of cold, dense water and another column of hot,
lighter water, constitutes a thermo-syphon, resulting in a pressure gain, but
typically this gain is less than 1 MPa, whereas the pressure loss in the reservoir is
usually several times greater.
Hence the dominant term in the overall impedance is that of the reservoir itself.
Non-Darcy ¯ow and turbulence in the reservoir fractures, as well as the pressure-
dependent dilation of the fracture network, normally result in a non-linear
relationship between ¯ow and pressure. At the Fenton Hill HDR reservoir the
impedance decreased with an increasing level of reservoir pressurization, i.e., at
higher ¯ow rates.
Reservoir impedance can be extremely complicated, as shown by Fig. 1. It can
be thought of as having three components. The ®rst of these is the inlet
impedance near the injection well, where the concentration of ¯ow streamlines and
high velocities, leading to non-Darcy ¯ow, could result in high pressure losses that
scale with the square of the ¯ow rate. However, the injection well is usually
operated at pressures close to the hydraulic stimulation pressure, so dilation of
fracture apertures in this region greatly o€sets the otherwise high pressure loss
here. The second component is referred to as simply the reservoir impedance or
the main reservoir impedance, and because here the ¯ow streamlines have
diverged, velocities are low and pressure losses may be surprisingly small despite
the longer ¯owpath lengths in the main reservoir. The third component is at the
production well, where the ¯owpaths converge, and again high velocities and non-
Darcy ¯ow occur, but now the velocities and pressure losses are even greater than
 H. Murphy et al. / Geothermics 28 (1999) 491±506 495

those that occur at the injection well because the production well is normally
maintained at low pressure, so the fractures in its vicinity are more tightly closed
(DuTeau and Brown, 1993; Murphy and Pearce, 1985). Because most of the
impedance is usually located near the production well, it is possible that greater
heat production could be garnered from larger reservoirs, with greater spacing
between injection and production wells, without su€ering a signi®cant impedance
increase.
The operator can attempt to reduce the high outlet impedance by injecting, at
high pressure, proppants down the production well and into the fractures near the
production well as was successfully done at Rosemanowes, or by imposing high
pressure in the production well, referred to as high back-pressure operation. Los
Alamos researchers showed that by pressurizing both the injection and production
wells, the impedance could be reduced to 0.05 MPa s/l for the ®rst, 2.7 km-deep
HDR reservoir at Fenton Hill (Dash et al., 1981; Brown, 1995).
High back-pressure operation is sometimes dicult to control in practice. High
¯ow rate is normally desired to maximize the heat production rate. High back-
pressure may reduce outlet impedance, which would increase the rate of ¯ow
through the reservoir if the pressure di€erence between the injection and
production wells did not change, but high back pressure reduces this pressure
di€erence, as the injection pressure cannot be increased above the fracturing
pressure. The two e€ects, decreased impedance, but decreased pressure di€erence,
o€set each other. Furthermore, as we will see in the next section, high back-
pressure operation is likely to increase water losses.
Despite the complexity of impedance, it is remarkable that almost all of the
engineered reservoirs created to date have values of 1 MPa s/l or less, showing
that reservoirs can be hydraulically stimulated and manipulated to provide the
impedance that the operator desires. As impressive as these results are, however,
the more ambitious goal of 0.1 MPa s/l has yet to be attained on a consistent
basis, although the impedance of the Soultz reservoir was 0.2 MPa s/l at ¯ow
rates between 15 and 22 l/s.
Flow testing of the second, 3.5 km-deep Fenton Hill reservoir in the period
1992±1995 has shown that, with time, the reservoir ¯ow paths become more
di€use, with the longer residence-time paths taking progressively more of the total
¯ow (Callahan, 1996). Modeling using the GEOCRACK discrete-element reservoir
simulator (Swenson et al., 1995) suggests that, as the inlet region is progressively
cooled, additional ¯ow paths open up, or manifolding to previously less-accessible
paths is developed.
The permeability of a fractured reservoir is related to the apertures of the
fractures and average spacing between fractures. But aperture cannot be measured
directly, it must be inferred from impedance measurements (Dash and Murphy,
1986; Cornwell and Murphy, 1985), tracer studies (Tester et al. 1982; Matsunaga
et al., 1995) and radon emanations (Andrews et al., 1986).
The Camborne group has shown that the range of aperture estimates at the
Rosemanowes reservoir is 0.050±0.60 mm, and fracture spacing is a few m. The
Fenton Hill reservoir estimate, based on ¯ow modeling and a mean joint spacing
496 H. Murphy et al. / Geothermics 28 (1999) 491±506

of less than 10 m, is that the mean joint aperture just prior to joint opening by
pressurization is of the order of 0.2 mm. Based upon numerical analysis of ¯ow in
a fracture with a Gangi bed-of-nails fracture sti€ness/aperture model, Yamashita
et al. (1997) found that the fracture aperture near the Hijiori injection well is 1.4±
2.6 mm while injecting at a rate sucient to extend the fracture. Fracture
apertures estimated from tracer experiments in a shallow reservoir at Hijiori range
from 2 to 14 mm (Matsunaga et al., 1995). The values obtained are larger than
those of other estimations, but the mass balance aperture obtained by tracer
experiments is usually greater than the frictional loss aperture inferred from
impedance (Tsang, 1992).
In a shallow reservoir at Falkenberg, Germany, fracture aperture ranged from
0.2±0.5 mm at hydrostatic pressure, to 1.0±2.0 mm at fracture extension pressure
(20 bars pressure change). Fracture aperture was measured mechanically in the
well and calculated from inlet ¯ow impedance (Jung, 1989). At Soultz, a fracture
aperture of 0.4 mm was calculated from the inlet impedance (Kohl et al., 1995).

2.2. Reservoir water losses

Another parameter of importance to a reservoir operator is the rate at which

water must be added, i.e., the de®cit between the water injected in one well and
produced at the other. Water losses may be an important consideration where
there exists a risk of provoking a damaging earthquake by elevated pore pressure.
Absent this risk, which appears to be the case at many engineered reservoir sites
(Skipp et al., 1991), water loss is not a serious matter except in regions where
fresh water might be unavailable (it would be inadvisable to inject ocean, salt
water for fear of adverse geochemical e€ects). The water loss is related to the size
of the reservoir, the operating pressure, and permeability of the surrounding rock,
as well as the possibility of connection to a nearby fault system.
Reservoir water losses can be divided into three principal components, not all
of which are applicable for every reservoir, or even for all times during the
development and subsequent operation of a particular reservoir. But these three
components help in understanding water loss behavior. They are:
1. Time-dependent water loss from the periphery of a pressurized reservoir by
`pressure' di€usion, through the fabric of the rock surrounding the pressure-
dilated reservoir region, when the reservoir is operated below the stimulation
pressure. This type of water loss is a function of the reservoir pressure and time
of pressurization, but not of the circulation ¯ow rate through the reservoir.
2. An apparent water loss, due to water storage in an expanding engineered
reservoir. This is not actually water loss because a large part of this water
storage may be recovered ultimately when the reservoir is depressurized.
However, part of the water storage due to permanent dilation of the fractures
caused, for example, by shear slippage may be unrecoverable. During a Fenton
Hill test in 1986, there was an apparent water loss of about 5 l/s while injecting
into the 3.5 km deep reservoir at 30 MPa. However, most of this apparent
 H. Murphy et al. / Geothermics 28 (1999) 491±506 497

water loss was simply additional water being stored in the expanding joint
network in the high-pressure part of the reservoir on the opposite side of the
injection well from the production well (Brown and Fehler, 1989).
3. The ¯ow of water through permeable faults and fractures of recent geological
age that intersect, or are intersected by, the engineered reservoir region. This
appears to be occurring at both Soultz and Hijiori. Researchers have remarked
upon the di€erences between the hydrological settings of Soultz and Hijiori
compared to the Fenton Hill. Fenton Hill appears to be hydrologically isolated
from major faults and nearby conventional, hydrothermal reservoirs, whereas
Soultz and Hijiori are not nearly so isolated, o€ering the possibility that the
arti®cial reservoir could be connected to a natural one: a Hot Wet Rock
reservoir as referred to in the Introduction.

Where water loss is a concern, operators establish reservoir pressures to provide

the best balance between low impedance, achieved by raising pressure, and low
water loss, achieved by lowering pressure. The choice of operating conditions
will depend upon site conditions. Where water is plentiful, an operator may
decide to raise pressure, thus reducing impedance and energy production. On the
other hand, if water supplies are scarce the operator may have to operate at low
pressure to conserve water, and thus accept a higher impedance and lower
energy production rate. The trade-o€ is clearly shown for the Rosemanowes
reservoir in Fig. 2. At an injection pressure of 5 MPa the loss rate was only 2 l/
s, but at 12 MPa, nearly equal to the fracturing pressure, the loss was 15 l/s.
But at 12 MPa the impedance was only 0.5 MPa s/l, whereas at 5 MPa the
impedance was 1 MPa s/l. Japanese researchers experienced the same
phenomena at Hijiori (Matsunaga et al., 1995). At an injection ¯ow rate of 16 l/
s and injection pressure of 8 MPa the loss rate was 8 l/s, but after the injection
rate and pressure were increased to 33 l/s and 12 MPa, respectively, the loss
rate increased to 23 l/s.
At the 2.7 km deep reservoir of Fenton Hill, water losses at ®rst declined
with the square root of time, but then approached a steady value of 0.6 l/s.
Injection rate was 6 l/s. After 17 months of static (non-circulating) reservoir
pressurization at a mean level of 15 MPa, the water loss due to boundary
di€usion from the deeper (4 km) Phase II reservoir at Fenton Hill dropped to a
rate of just 0.16 l/s. During ¯ow testing at an injection pressure of 27 MPa and
a backpressure on the production well of 9.7 MPa the water loss dropped to
about 0.8 l/s following 110 days of operation (Brown and DuTeau, 1993), and
then dropped further to 0.46 l/s following an additional 9 months of
intermittent reservoir ¯ow testing at the same or similar conditions (Brown,
1995). Hyodo et al. (1996) report the loss rate was 4 l/s at Hijiori when
extrapolated to steady state. At Soultz the ¯uid losses could be kept at zero by
down-hole pumping in the production well (BaumgaÈrtner et al., 1996). Thus the
¯uid losses of the high pressure zone at the inlet could be compensated by a
gain of ¯uid in the sub-hydrostatic region at the outlet.
 498
H. Murphy et al. / Geothermics 28 (1999) 491±506

Fig. 2. Hydraulic performance parameters of the RH12/RH15 system as a function of injection pressure: (a) impedance; (b) water loss, Rosemanowes, UK.
 H. Murphy et al. / Geothermics 28 (1999) 491±506 499

2.3. Tracer studies

Tracer measurements, the injection of a radioactive substance, halogen salt or

colored dye in the injection well and the recovery of the tracer in the production
well, provide a measure of the volume of the fracture system, and with modeling
the internal structure of fracture pathways may be inferred.
The modeling of tracer responses, i. e. the variation of the tracer concentration
at the production well head with time, was initiated at Fenton Hill (Tester et al.,
1982; Robinson and Tester, 1984). Several techniques helped distinguish individual
¯ow paths at Hijiori and Rosemanowes (Matsunaga et al., 1995; Rodriques, et al.,
1995). At Hijiori tracer response curves were correlated to each fracture ¯ow zone
obtained by pressure-temperature-spinner logs. Fracture areas were ®rst obtained
by temperature draw-down measurements, then apertures of fractures were
obtained by matching the overall tracer response curve. Results indicate that the
heat exchange area of the main fractures changed remarkably during a three-
month circulation test in 1991, but the aperture of the fractures did not change so
much.

3. Current practices in hydraulic testing

Below we review some of the more promising methods of determining reservoir

features and predicting reservoir performance.

3.1. Stepped ¯ow and stimulation tests

As discussed earlier, reservoirs are usually operated at high pressuresÐnearly at

hydraulic stimulation levelsÐto reduce impedance and maximize heat production.
The high pressure pumps required for ordinary operation are also quite sucient
to enable small stimulations aimed at, for example, reducing near wellbore inlet
and outlet impedances. A convenient method for doing so is the use of stepped
¯ow tests. Typically these consist of injecting into a well at a constant ¯ow rate
and recording the pressure rise with time. Typically the pressure rises: (1) linearly
with time, providing information about wellbore compressibility; then (2) more
gradually with time, perhaps logarithmically, providing information about in situ
rock permeability; and ®nally (3) the pressure may attain a plateau, independent
of time, suggesting that a stimulation pressure has been attained whereby the
fractures, arti®cial or natural, have actually opened up against their closure stress
or else have experienced enough relaxation of e€ective closure stress that shearing
occurs, accompanied by shear dilation. Fig. 3 (Brown, 1989) shows results of
injecting at rates of 4.5, 8.5 and 10.5 l/s at Fenton Hill. The three accompanying
pressure versus time curves each show the expected features of pressure varying
®rst linearly with time, then a more gradual variation, and ®nally an asymptotic
approach to a constant pressure plateau.
In the petroleum industry, conventional hydraulic stimulation is conducted by
500 H. Murphy et al. / Geothermics 28 (1999) 491±506

Fig. 3. Stepped ¯ow-test results at Fenton Hill, New Mexico.

injecting viscous gels at high ¯ow rates in short time periods. This procedure
dilates the fractures as much as possible for the placement of proppants,
maximizes the fracture volume and minimizes ¯uid losses. The concept of the step
stimulation tests as applied at Soultz is opposite. It is aimed at maximizing the
¯uid losses and minimizing the fracture volume during the stimulation process.
The concept presumes that at most sites the basement rock is intersected by faults
or fracture zones. If a fracture system propagates in such a medium, it will
intersect these features. For a given ¯ow rate, propagation of the zone of
hydraulic stimulation continues until the ¯uid losses into these faults and fracture
zones approach the injection ¯ow rate. At this time fracture propagation ceases.
But when the injection ¯ow rate is increased, the fractures propagate further, thus
increasing the intersection length with these faults and fracture zones. After a
certain time a second equilibrium is reached. The process could be repeated for
additional, higher ¯ow rates. The aim is to make the hydraulic connection to these
faults and fracture zones as good as possible and thus to include them within the
heat extraction system. The use of low viscosity water, rather than a viscous gel,
and the gradual increase of the ¯ow rate, starting at a low level, results in low
pressure, which favors shear-slippage of natural fractures instead of normal
opening of natural fractures and initiation of new fractures. The advantage is that
 H. Murphy et al. / Geothermics 28 (1999) 491±506 501

the degree of self-propping is higher for shearing than for normal opening.
Sheared fractures retain an aperture that is similar to the aperture achieved during
stimulation.
Fig. 4 (Jung et al., 1995) gives a result of stepped stimulation at Soultz. Water
injections were made at increasing ¯ow rates from 3 to 50 l/s. Total injection
volume was 25,000 m3. Following each injection, the reservoir inlet injectivity, the
reciprocal of the impedance, was measured. It increased more than ten-fold.
Subsequent results showed that fractures stimulated in this way retained an
aperture of more than 0.4 mm and remained substantially dilated when
depressurized (Jung, 1991).
At the Fenton Hill reservoir the permeability of the granitic rock surrounding
the reservoir was so low, less than 1 mDarcy (10ÿ18 m2), that water losses were not
a concern. Hence water injections served to extend the reservoir volume,
regardless of ¯ow rate, and the volume of the reservoir was linearly related to the
injection volume (Brown, 1995).

3.2. Multi-rate pre-fracturing hydraulic tests (open-hole)

In these tests the injection ¯ow rate is increased in steps. In each step the ¯ow is
continued at constant rate until the injection pressure attains an asymptotic value.
Each of these values is plotted vs its corresponding ¯ow rate. In the ideal case the
pressure-¯ow rate curve ®rst follows a linear trend for low ¯ow rates, thus

Fig. 4. Post-fracturing productivity or injectivity as a function of the ¯owrate applied during hydraulic-
fracturing. Data from borehole GPK1 in Soultz (after Jung, 1995).
502 H. Murphy et al. / Geothermics 28 (1999) 491±506

indicating laminar ¯ow, then shows a trend towards a quadratic relationship for
higher ¯ow rates, indicating turbulent or non-Darcy ¯ow, and ®nally bends
toward a constant pressure line when fracture dilation becomes signi®cant. A
complete test of this kind yields valuable information about the transmissibility,
the signi®cance of turbulence and details of fracture dilation. This information
helps to design the stimulation test and is the reference for determining the e€ect
of the stimulation.

3.3. Multi-rate post-fracturing tests

These single-well tests are performed to determine the hydraulic properties of

the stimulated fracture system. They are performed in the same way as the
corresponding pre-fracturing tests, except that the ¯ow rates are usually much
higher and the test duration is longer. For laminar ¯ows we determine fracture
transmissibility, fracture storage capacitance, ¯uid losses, ¯ow geometry (radial,
linear, bilinear, etc.) and rock permeability by applying type-curve analysis to the
pressure transients. For turbulent ¯ow, numerical models such as the one
developed by Kohl et al. (1997) have to be used. The steady-state pressure versus
¯ow rate relationship obtained during these tests yields information about the
inlet ¯ow impedance, the e€ects of turbulence, and fracture dilation.

3.4. Long-term injection and production tests

Long-term injection and production tests in a single well are especially useful
for determining the outer hydraulic boundary conditions of the stimulated fracture
system and can help to predict the long-term ¯uid losses from the reservoir during
operation. For laminar ¯ow, and the assumption that hydraulic properties remain
constant, type curve analysis as used in conventional hydrology may be adopted,
but this leads to approximate results as the analysis is based upon two-
dimensional ¯ow in a reservoir con®ned between upper and lower impermeable
strata, unlikely to be the case in an engineered geothermal reservoir. These tests
can take several days. At Hijiori, for example, it takes half a day of pumping
before quasi-static conditions prevail.

3.5. Tracers

With the two purposeful exceptions presented in the next section,

Recommendations for Future Research and Development, tracers must be chosen
that are truly inert and do not inadvertently react to pH changes or other changes
of chemical environment. In the limit of vanishing water loss, all the injected
tracer ultimately should be recovered. In the past much e€ort has focused upon
analysis of the modal tracer volume, i.e., the produced ¯ow volume when the
tracer makes its maximum concentration appearance at the production well.
Unfortunately, such modal volumes have little signi®cance when there is more
than one dominant ¯ow path, a multiply-fractured reservoir, for example. In these
 H. Murphy et al. / Geothermics 28 (1999) 491±506 503

cases the most useful measures are the breakthrough and median volumes, the
®rst being the produced ¯ow volume at ®rst appearance of the tracer, the second
occurring at 50% of recovery. Repeated tracer tests are an important diagnostic.
Comparison of before and after tracer responses indicate, for example, the degree
of success of stimulation, or the possibility that thermal stress cracking or other
processes may have enlarged the reservoir.

4. Recommendations for future research and development

Completion of the following research and development tasks would advance the
understanding of engineered reservoirs.

4.1. Tracer measurements

A suite of temperature-sensitive tracers should be developed, each of which

undergoes a chemical transformation at a selected temperature, to investigate
temperature distributions in the reservoir. After a few months of reservoir heat
extraction, several such tracers, each with a distinct transformation temperature,
Ti, could be injected. From the recoveries of the tracers in the production well one
might be able to infer what fraction of the reservoir is still at a temperature, T1,
how much at T2, etc. It is also proposed (see Brown et al., 1999) that a
combination of inert and sorbing tracers might be e€ective in identifying the
fracture areas e€ective in heat transfer. When injected simultaneously, the surface-
sorbing tracer will be produced after the inert tracer, and the time delay should be
a measure of the fracture surface area in the major ¯ow paths through the
reservoir.

4.2. Flow-meter measurements

Flow-meter measurements help determine details of the fracture-wellbore inlet

geometry, but the commonly used `spinner', or impeller type ¯ow-meter sonde, is
mechanically too insensitive. This situation arises from the fact that the spinner
tool is usually of much smaller diameter than the wellbore, and the ¯uid therefore
preferentially ¯ows around rather than through the tool, due to the increased ¯ow
resistance that the impeller blades provide. The normal answer is to pack
(obstruct) the annulus around the tool, but this leads to problems when moving
the tool or to the risk of the tool sticking in the well. Development of a magneto-
inductive ¯ow-meter sonde would be advantageous.

4.3. Glass ®ber temperature measurements

Hurtig et al. (1994) and Osato et al. (1995), have described a ®bre-optic
temperature sensing technique using Raman light scattering analysis that provides
not a temperature at a single point, but the distribution of temperatures along the
504 H. Murphy et al. / Geothermics 28 (1999) 491±506

®ber. When deployed downhole, the ®ber provides temperature surveys without
moving the ®bre. The present temperature capability appears to be limited to
about 2508C, but Iglesias (1997) is developing systems capable of operation up to
4508C and 50 MPa.

4.4. Induced pressure oscillations

These tests provide valuable information, especially on the inner boundary

conditions (wellbore fracture intersections) if tests at various frequencies can be
performed. Pressure oscillations could be induced by pressure-pulses (free
oscillations) or by an oscillator.

References

Andrews, J.N., Hussain, N., Batchelor, A.S., Kwakwa, K., 1986. 222Rn solution by the circulating ¯uids
in a ``hot dry rock'' geothermal reservoir. Applied Geochemistry 1, 647±657.
BaumgaÈrtner, J., Jung, R., Gerard, A., Baria, R., Garnish, J., 1996. The European HDR Project at
Soultz-sous-Forets: stimulation of the second deep well and ®rst circulation experiments. In:
Proceedings of 21st Workshop on Geothermal Reservoir Engineering, Stanford University, pp. 267±
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