Monitoring of a geothermal reservoir by hybrid gravimetry; feasibility study applied to the Soultz-sous-Forêts and Rittershoffen sites in the Rhine graben
Résumé
The study is devoted to the monitoring of a geothermal reservoir by hybrid
gravimetry combining different types of instruments (permanent superconducting
gravimeter, absolute ballistic gravimeter, and micro-gravimeters) and different
techniques of measurements (both time-discrete and recording data collection).
Using a micro-gravimetric repetition network around a reference station, which is
regularly measured, leads to the knowledge of the time and space changes in surface
gravity. Such changes can be linked to the natural or anthropic activities of the reservoir.
A feasibility study using this methodology is applied to two geothermal sites in the
Alsace region (France) of the Rhine graben. We show the results in terms of gravity
double differences from weekly repetitions of a network of 11 stations around the
geothermal reservoir of Soultz-sous-Forêts, separated into 5 loops during July–August
2013 and 2014 as well as preliminary results from 2 stations near Rittershoffen (ECOGI).
We point out the importance of a precise leveling of the gravity points for the control of
the vertical deformation. A first modeling of surface gravity changes induced by realistic
geothermal density perturbations (Newtonian attraction) is computed in the frame of the
existing geological model and leads to gravity changes below the μGal level being
hence undetectable. However, and for the same case, borehole gravity modeling showed
a significant anomaly with depth that can be used as a complementary monitoring
method. We show that in the limit of our uncertainties (SD ~ 5 μGal), we do not detect
any significant gravity change on the geothermal site of Soultz in agreement with the
fact that there was indeed no geothermal activity during our analysis period. On the
contrary, the measurements near Rittershoffen show a signal above the noise level which
correlates in time with a production test but cannot be explained in terms of Newtonian
attraction effects according to our basic numerical simulation.
Domaines
Géophysique [physics.geo-ph]Origine | Fichiers éditeurs autorisés sur une archive ouverte |
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