PROCEEDINGS, Thirty-Ninth Workshop on Geothermal Reservoir Engineering Stanford University, Stanford, California, February 24-26, 2014 SGP-TR-202 HIGH TEMPERATURES PREDICTED IN THE GRANITIC BASEMENT OF NORTHWEST ALBERTA - AN ASSESSMENT OF THE EGS ENERGY POTENTIAL Jacek Majorowicz1*, Greg Nieuwenhuis1, Martyn Unsworth1, Jordan Phillips1 and Rebecca Verveda1 1University of Alberta Department of Physics, Canada *email:
[email protected] Keywords: Heat flow, EGS, Alberta, Canada ABSTRACT Northwest Alberta is characterized by high subsurface temperatures that may represent a significant geothermal resource. In this paper we present new data that allows us to make predictions of the temperatures that might be found within the crystalline basement rocks. In this region the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin (WCSB) is composed of up to 3 km of Phanerozoic sedimentary rocks with low thermal conductivity, which act as a thermal blanket. Commercial well-logging data was cleaned of erroneous data and corrected for paleoclimatic effects to give an average geothermal gradient of 35 K per km, and maximum geothermal gradients reaching 50K per km. These gradients, along with a thermal conductivity model of sedimentary rocks, were then used to estimate heat flow across the unconformity at the base of the WCSB. The calculations assumed a heat generation of 0.5 µW/m3 within the sedimentary rocks. Estimation of temperatures within the crystalline basement rocks requires knowledge of the thermal conductivity (TC) and heat generation (HG) of these rocks. These are mainly granitic Precambrian rocks. Thermal conductivity (TC) and heat generation (HG) of the basement rocks were measured on samples recovered from hundreds of wells that sampled the Pre-Cambrian basement rocks.