Thermal drawdown and recovery of singly and multiply fractured hot dry rock reservoirs

To calculate heat extraction and thermal recovery in hot dry rock geothermal reservoirs, a computer code was written to solve the differential equations for rock-water heat conduction and convection by finite differences. Temperature versus time functions for multiple fractures separated by various spacings are presented in dimensional and in nondimensional plots. The results were specialized for the limiting case of a single fracture in unbounded rock and for the other limiting case where the rock is so extensively fractured that thermal breakthrough phenomena can occur. Fracture temperatures were calculated during the thermal recovery following various extraction periods. For the single-fracture case these temperature recoveries could, with slight approximation, be represented as a single curve depending only upon the ratio of the total elapsed time and the extraction time.