Field and laboratory studies of subsurface water injection: Seasonal Thermal Energy Storage program (STES)

The Seasonal Thermal Energy Storage (STES) project office at the Battelle, Pacific Northwest Laboratory has sponsored development of an Aquifer Properties Test Facility (APTF) to evaluate the effects of thermal cycling on reservoir properties. The APTF Laboratory apparatus for testing aquifer materials at elevated temperature and pressure (Figure 1) is now being used to evaluate aquifer material from the University of Minnesota Field Test Facility (FTF). Injection well impairment has been experienced at STES sites in Mobile, Alabama and Stony Brook, New York. Terra Tek Research, under contract to Battelle, PNL, performed a laboratory evaluation of impairment mechanisms that may have been involved in the failure of the injection well at the Stony Brook site. Terra Tek Research, again under contract to Battelle, PNL, designed, built and installed a portable Field Injectability Test Stand (FITS) at the STES Field Test Facility, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, Minnesota. The injectability apparatus uses membrane filters and core samples as injection formation analogs to evaluate the response of a representative porous matrix to injected water.