Geothermal Canada is excited to announce a new ‘Students’ Page’, which includes a Monthly Feature, Student Research, and geothermal Programs and Courses in Canada. We hope to continue building up these pages to support and promote geothermal research and development, and proudly present student research.
If you would like to showcase your Student Research, please email students@geothermalcanada.org.
Monthly Feature - June 2021
This month will be dedicated to the research underway at INRS in Québec City. The Institut nordique du Quebec (INQ) funded a research chair to assess the geothermal energy potential of northern Quebec focused on the diesel-based off-grid communities. The chairholder is Jasmin Raymond.
One of the research projects associated with the research chair is the PhD thesis of Mafalda Miranda entitled “Assessment of the deep geothermal energy source potential in remote northern regions: a study undertaken in the subarctic off-grid community of Kuujjuaq (Nunavik, Canada)”. This thesis outlines an approach to carry out a first-order evaluation of the deep geothermal energy source using geothermal exploration tools that are affordable to the northern and remote communities facing critical energy issues and with important geothermal data gaps. These exploration methods include the utilization of outcrops as subsurface analogues, shallow groundwater monitoring wells for heat flux assessment, numerical modeling and uncertainty quantification.
RELATED RESEARCH
Miranda MM, Giordano N, Raymond J, Pereira AJSC, Dezayes C (2020) Thermophysical properties of surficial rocks: a tool to characterize geothermal resources of remote northern regions. Geothermal Energy 8:4; https://doi.org/10.1186/s40517-020-0159-y
How outcrops can be used as deep subsurface analogues.
Variability induced by laboratory methods to characterize thermophysical properties is also assessed looking at how this influences our ability to estimate the present-day temperature at depth and surface terrestrial heat flux.
Miranda MM, Velez Marquez MI, Raymond J, Dezayes C (2021) A numerical approach to infer terrestrial heat flux from shallow temperature profiles in remote northern regions. Geothermics 93:102064; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geothermics.2021.102064
Goal is to develop a model to numerically correct paleoclimate events and simultaneously infer terrestrial heat flux with inverse numerical simulations.
Miranda MM, Raymond J, Dezayes C (2020) Uncertainty and risk evaluation of deep geothermal energy source for heat production and electricity generation in remote northern regions. Energies 13(16):4221; https://doi.org/10.3390/en13164221
Identify the most influential geological and technical uncertainties on the thermal energy available beneath Kuujjuaq
Evaluate if the deep geothermal energy source in-place can meet Kuujjuaq’s community heat and power demand.
TRIBUTE
In this month’s edition, the geothermal research group at INRS would like to pay tribute to an amazing human being and a high-level student who passed away in early 2020. Maria Isabel Vélez Márquez made several important contributions to unveil the geothermal energy potential of the region of Charlevoix in Québec and of Nevado del Ruiz volcano in Colombia. Furthermore, she did extraordinary work in the field of thermal response tests. Some of her research contributions are listed below:
Vélez MI, Blessent D, Córdoba S, López-Sánchez J, Raymond J, Parra-Palacio E (2018) Geothermal potential assessment of the Nevado del Ruiz volcano based on rock thermal conductivity measurements and numerical modeling of heat transfer. Journal of South American Earth Sciences 81:153-164; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsames.2017.11.011
Vélez Márquez MI, Raymond J, Blessent D, Philippe M, Simon N, Bour O, Lamarche L (2018) Distributed thermal response tests using a heating cable and fiber optic temperature sensing. Energies 11(11):3059; https://doi.org/10.3390/en11113059
Vélez Márquez MI (2018) Tests de réponse thermique distribués avec câbles chauffants. Master in Sciences (M.Sc.). Québec, Université du Québec, Institut national de la recherche scientifique, 107 p. Available at http://espace.inrs.ca/id/eprint/8027/1/T889.pdf
Vélez Márquez MI, Raymond J, Blessent D, Philippe M (2019) Terrestrial heat flow evaluation from thermal response tests combined with temperature profiling. Physics and Chemistry of the Earth, Parts A/B/C 113:22-30; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pce.2019.07.002