Speaker: Omar Rodriguez Villarreal
Date: Thursday 17th of November 2022, 1:15 pm.
Abstract:
Humanity faces great challenges from climate change and finding the right solutions will require new contributions in geotechnics and fracture mechanics. It will require the implementation of satisfactory solutions based on a better understanding of subsurface properties and behavior, monitoring of geo-material behavior, and management of geotechnical and geo-environmental processes. According to the United Nations Convention on Climate Change, one way to mitigate climate change is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, as established in the 2015 Paris Agreement, which aims to control long-term temperature increases by regulating the production of greenhouse gases. One way to achieve such a goal is to use renewable energy resources, such as geothermal energy. In this presentation, we focus on presenting the benefits of the exploitation of Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS). An EGS can be considered a subway heat exchanger designed to extract geothermal energy. The performance of these systems can be improved by increasing the permeability through the judicious application of fracture mechanics. Under this approach, it is important to know the physical parameters of the rock, one of them being the so-called fracture energy. In addition, Mexico is one country with the greatest geothermal potential in the world, this clean and renewable source of energy is little exploited, an example of this is that in Mexico there are only five geothermal power plants.