Spatio-temporal Monitoring of Heat Storage in a Shallow Aquifer Using Electrical Resistivity 4D Imagery and DTS

The design of groundwater heat pumps requires a good understanding of the aquifer and heat flow conditions. Issues of short-circuit or recycling between cold and hot wells have to be carefully considered. Surface geophysical methods allow monitoring subsurface processes without additional perturbations of the medium. Within available methods, the electrical resistivity imagery (ERI) applied in time-lapse (TL) is appropriate. Here, we monitored with ERI and distributed temperature sensors (DTS) a heat plume propagation during an experiment of hot water injection in a shallow aquifer. DTS and TL ERI measurements acquired from two boreholes provide a local estimate of the heat propagation through the medium. TL ERI were also performed from a grid at surface to follow the 3D plume shape formation and evolution through time. The different complementary data validate the potential of surface TL ERI for monitoring in 3D the behavior of shallow heat plumes. ERI highlight the heterogeneity of the aquifer by distinguishing regions with higher or lower hydraulic conductivity. In the higher hydraulic conductivity zone, the heat might be evacuated through water flow, while in the lower hydraulic conductivity area heat storage is achievable. Thus, in that last region the plume temperature decreases progressively with time.