The coming energy transition and accelerating need for abundant, clean, baseload power and heating have motivated exploration of deeper and hotter subsurface environments, in particular high enthalpy geothermal systems (above 375C). These superhot rock (SHR) resources could produce supercritical water, with its advantageous energy density, potentially achieving electricity at scale, cost competitive with fossil fuels. In order to achieve these goals, basic geomechanical / geophysical properties of rock near the Brittle-Ductile Transition Zone and geochemistry of supercritical fluid-rock interactions must be better understood. I led a report (https://www.catf.us/superhot-rock/bridging-gaps/) commissioned by the Clean Air Task Force to identify the state-of-the-art and knowledge gaps for identification, characterization, and monitoring of potential SHR geothermal reservoirs (see press). Given what we learned, we are now exploring lab and field validation of geophysical signatures of SHR resources and monitoring of thermo-hydraulic-mechanical-chemical (THMC) processes during heat extraction.
Collaborators: Terra Rodgers & Angela Seligman (CATF); Chanmaly Chhun, Pascal Caraccioli Salinas, Carolina Munoz Saez, & Congcong Yuan (Cornell), Tushar Mittal (Penn State); Ben Holtzman (MIT); Anna Barth (Strabo Engineering);