Geophysical monitoring of a thermal response test

Geothermal energy systems efficiency relies on the quantification of the thermal properties of the ground. The estimation of those properties can be done by means of thermal response tests (TRT) or thanks to values found in literature tables; the first approach provides relatively limited information since the measures are done in boreholes and the values from general tables can present a lack of accuracy. Geophysical methods might be useful in order to yield additional information for thermal properties estimation on higher investigation scales. In this study, electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) is used to monitor the evolution of heated water injected into an unconfined aquifer. Both heat injection and storage were monitored during a total period of 17 days. The principal conclusion is that the use of ERT is efficient to monitor the progressive temperature increase and decrease in the aquifer due to the presence of the heated plume. The resistivity distributions calculated by inversion were compared with electromagnetic borehole measurements and were consistent in the case of the storage phase, whereas a higher gap remained between measured and calculated resistivities for the injection phase. A conversion of the calculated resistivities into temperature values enabled a validation with temperature logs for the storage phase, while the temperature deduced for the injection profiles were too low. Those differences are justified by the fact that different error models were used to proceed to the imaging of the heat injection and storage. This work demonstrates the ability of ERT to monitor geothermal experiment in shallow aquifer.
Keywords: geothermal energy, electrical resistivity, electromagnetic method, heat transfer, inversion process, thermal response test.