Analysis of tracer and thermal transients during reinjection

This work studied tracer and thermal transients during reinjection in geothermal reserviors and developed a new technique which combines the results from interwell tracer tests and thermal injection-backflow tests to estimate the thermal breakthrough times. Tracer tests are essential to determine the degree of connectivity between the injection wells and the producing wells. To analyze the tracer return profiles quantitatively, we employed three mathematical models namely, the convection-dispersion (CD) model, matrix diffusion (MD) model, and the Avodnin (AD) model, which were developed to study tracer and heat transport in a single vertical fracture. We considered three types of tracer tests namely, interwell tracer tests without recirculation, interwell tracer tests with recirculation, and injection-backflow tracer tests. To estimate the model parameters, we used a nonlinear regression program to match tracer return profiles to the solutions.