HGS RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT – Geothermal Energy Potential of Active Northern Underground Mines: Designing a System Relying on Mine Water
HydroGeoSphere is a powerful tool for evaluating the potential of geothermal heat pump systems. HGS implicitly simulates thermal energy throughout hydrologic systems (including density driven transport effects), and can model extremely complex geological systems with spatially and temporally varying material properties, with or without the presence of discrete fractures, and with the ability to represent mine infrastructure as discrete features within the model.
HGS RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT - Integrated surface-subsurface water and solute modeling of a reclaimed in-pit oil sands mine: Effects of ground freezing and thawing
The HydroGeoSphere model presented here was able to successfully simulate the water balance and water quality response of the reclaimed landforms, and the results indicate that the impact of winter processes (i.e., pore-water freeze/thaw) on infiltration and surface runoff are significant. Including freeze-thaw resulted in reduced infiltration during spring melt and reduced salt loading during winter. In total, a 20% reduction of chloride mass release (over an 8-year period) was simulated when freeze-thaw processes were included in the simulations. These results provide a strong argument for the inclusion if winter processes and coupled heat dynamics for detailed studies of integrated hydrologic processes in the Athabasca Oil Sands region.
HGS Research Highlight - Coupled atmospheric, land surface, and subsurface modeling: Exploring water and energy feedbacks in three-dimensions
This post highlights the recent study by Davison et al. (2015) on the coupling of HGS to an Atmospheric Boundary Layer (ABL) model. Implementing the coupled HGS-ABL model the authors found ...