Hawaii Geothermal Project: The Effect of Dike Intrusion on Free Convection in Geothermal Reservoirs

Abstract

A perturbation analysis is made for the simultaneous heat and mass transfer in unconfined geothermal reservoirs with dike intrusion. The perturbation equations are of elliptic type that can be solved numerically by the finite difference method. Up to the second-order approximations are retained in the numerical computation. The effects of dike intrusion on streamlines, temperature distribution, and the shape of water table in two-dimensional aquifers with low permeability are shown.