The prometheus project for geothermal heat supply of the ruhr university bochum

The Prometheus project aims to stimulate rock fractures to form a heat exchanger between two boreholes at a depth of 4 kilometres to extract heat from the hot rock for the base load heat supply of approx. 10 MW of the Ruhr University Bochum and neighbouring major heat consumers. The feasibility study has summarised all the available geological, thermal, and rock mechanical information of the underground non coal-bearing Upper Carboniferous, has considered the existing energy infrastructure, the specific energy demand, the energy system distribution components and all economic aspects. It also included preparations for the exploration phase involving drilling a first deep borehole to confirm the data before the final realisation stage by drilling a second borehole and massive stimulation. In effect, it is a practical extrapolation of the European HDR project for electricity generation at a location with hot deep granite in the Upper Rhine Graben to a more general situation with sedimentary rocks and modest temperatures (120 °C) but with high heat demand.