GNGTS 2024 - Atti del 42° Convegno Nazionale

Session 3.1 GNGTS 2024 InGEO: Innovaton in geothermal resources and reserves potental assessment A. Manzella 1 , G. Gola 2 , M. Tesauro 3 , A. Galgaro 4 1 Isttuto di Geoscienze e Georisorse, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Pisa, Italy 2 Isttuto di Geoscienze e Georisorse, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Torino, Italy 3 Università degli Studi di Trieste, Dipartmento di Matematca e Geoscienze, Trieste, Italy 4 Università degli Studi di Padova, Dipartmento di Geoscienze, Padova, Italy In agreement with the European Green Deal, setng the ambitous target of reducing CO2 and climate-altering gas emissions by 55% by 2030 (from 1990 levels) and climate neutrality by 2050, the geothermal energy sector is expected to grow steadily. For many decades geothermal energy has been used on a large scale by tapping into hot water-bearing layers at 0 – 4 km depth. The geographical limitaton of large-scale geothermal plants is going to be overcome by recent advancements, which demonstrate that it is possible to produce energy also by deep closed-loop heat exchanger systems in the subsurface (Gola et al., 2022). While research in this feld develops, it is strategic to estmate - on a regional scale, down to a depth of 10 km - how much energy can be concentrated and extracted from upper-crustal layers. The InGEO project (Innovaton in GEOthermal resources and reserves potental assessment for the decarbonizaton of power/thermal sectors) aims to defne a method to quantfy the energy realistcally producible from deep geothermal energy sources at the regional level to be used for specifc technologies, e.g. to generate electricity or for district heatng. Startng from a review of the existng techniques for the evaluaton of the technical and economical-technical potental based on the volume method (Trumpy et al., 2016), further innovatons will be included. Key challenges, considering a regional scale example as a test site, consist of: (i) developing a robust assessment of the deep geothermal resources, considering the local geological conditons, the thermal regime and the heat exchange capacity; (ii) defning operatve solutons for heat extracton, including the exploitaton of natural hydrothermal systems, the deep closed-loop heat exchangers as well as the thermal energy storage technologies, to optmise the thermal performance; and (iii) validatng the regional scale approach with site-specifc informaton. The study area includes the sector of the buried fold and thrust belt of the Northern Apennine belonging to the Romagna and Ferrara Folds (Figure 1). This area has been the target of previous studies focused on both hydrocarbon and geothermal exploraton actvites. More than 500 boreholes with available lithostratgraphic and botom hole temperature informaton have been selected. Locally, thermal data highlight positve heat fow anomalies atributable to the deep fuid circulaton within the deep-seated carbonate sequences of Mesozoic age (Pasquale et al., 2013).