Project Description
Geothermal energy systems (GES) use groundwater as a source or sink of heat for heating or cooling.听Groundwater is extracted from an aquifer, passed through a heat exchanger, and returned to the aquifer at a temperature that is warmer (if used for cooling) or cooler (if used for heating) than the ambient groundwater.听The returned water travels through the aquifer as a thermal plume of heated or cooled water.听If this thermal plume reaches a temperature-sensitive ecosystem (TSE), the health of the ecosystem can be threatened.听This project will develop a modeling approach to determine where GES can be placed relative to locations of TSE to ensure that the temperature of the water reaching the TSE does not harm the TSE.听The modeling approach is called "adjoint modeling", which requires a reformulation of the governing equation of heat transport to model the heat transport from the point of view of the TSE.听This project involves numerical simulations using popular groundwater flow and solute transport models, python programming for pre- and post-processing, and working with partial differential equations of heat transport.
Special Requirement
The student should have familiarity with python programming and should have taken a course in differential equations.听
Contact
-
Roseanna Neupauer (baby直播app)