INFORMATION

Development, Monitoring, and Control of Fracture Thermal Energy Storage in Crystalline Rock Formations

The DEMO FTES project will experimentally measure the thermal efficiency and capacity of fracture thermal energy storage (FTES) at the laboratory scale and in an approximately 10 m scale multi-month field test. FTES is a method of seasonal underground thermal energy storage (UTES) where an efficient heat exchanger connecting multiple wells is created using carefully designed hydraulic fractures. The technique would allow for inexpensive, high-capacity thermal storage in much larger geographical areas than current technology allows, offering a path to significantly reduce energy usage and greenhouse gas emissions from the heating and cooling of buildings. Laboratory testing is planned at the Geo-Energy lab at EPFL Lausanne, while the field test is planned at an existing highly instrumented testbed at the Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF) in the U.S.Main Coordinator:

Jeffrey Burghardt
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Operated by Battelle for the US Department of Energy