Experimental Investigation of Boiling Heat Convection in a Fracture
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- This report focuses on the coupling between heat conduction and heat convection with boiling flow in a rock fracture. An experimental investigation attempted to analyze and quantify this coupling, which can be called a boiling convection coefficient. This coefficient is the proportionality factor between the heat flux to a fracture surface and the temperature of the rock near a fracture as water boils on that surface. Two types of experimental investigations, one transient experiment with boiling on a nonporous glass surface, and one steady state experiment with boiling on the surface of a rock from a geothermal reservoir, were conducted. On nonporous surfaces, the heat flux described by a boiling regime is strongly coupled to the flow regime of the fluid flowing along that surface. However, on a porous rock surface the near-surface temperature of the rock is prescribed by thermodynamics and controlled by measurable parameters such as porosity and permeability. The excess temperature associated with boiling appears to be much less coupled to the flow of fluid on that surface. These results encourage the development of a discrete fracture network model for a geothermal reservoir that would use a convection coefficient for coupling conductive heat transport in unfractured rock to the convective heat transport with fluid in fractures. Although more research is needed to construct a model, such a model could be useful for predicting the propagation of a thermal front associated with injection into vapor dominated reservoirs.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Date created | December 1998 |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | DuTeaux, Robert J. |
|---|---|
| Primary advisor | Horne, Roland N. |
| Degree granting institution | Stanford University, Department of Petroleum Engineering |
Subjects
| Subject | School of Earth Energy & Environmental Sciences |
|---|---|
| Genre | Thesis |
Bibliographic information
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Preferred citation
- Preferred Citation
- DuTeaux, Robert J. (1998). Experimental Investigation of Boiling Heat Convection in a Fracture. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at: https://purl.stanford.edu/md912bk2459
Collection
Master's Theses, Doerr School of Sustainability
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