Fluid Flow and Heat Transport Computation for Power-Law Scaling Poroperm Media

Figure 8

MWX crustal section fluid flow velocity vector distribution from Figure 1 poroperm structure. Blue arrows denote fluid flow in the major fault horizons of Figure 1. Red arrows denote fluid flow in the remaining crustal volume. It can be noted that Figure 1 spatial poroperm heterogeneity leads to azimuthally erratic flow paths within the faults and within the embedding ambient crustal volume. In the present horizontally stratified flow structure, heat transport modelled by spatially averaged flow will probably provide a reasonable wellbore temperature distribution. In the presence of more complex faulting, however, a spatially averaged poroperm medium would provide a poor approximation to the resultant erratic wellbore temperature distribution.