Wen Luo has a Master majoring in Oil-Gas Well Engineering at the Department of Petroleum and Gas Engineering at the Southwest Petroleum University (SWPU), Chengdu, China. He was working as an assistant fracturing engineer at the Institute of Engineering and Technology Research, Xinjiang OilField Branch, PetroChina.

• MSc School of Oil & Natural Gas Engineering, Southwest Petroleum University (Sep 2017 – June 2020)
• BSc School of Oil & Natural Gas Engineering, Southwest Petroleum University (Sep2013 – June 2017)

Project Title: Near-borehole thermo-hydro-mechanical processes
Host Institutions: TU Delft, RWTH Aachen, Hydreco Geomec
Supervisory Team: Phil Vardon, Florian Wellmann, Barbara Cox
Start date: 12.4.2021

Bringing together numerical modelling and detailed observations of the thermo-hydro-mechanical behaviour from the DAPwell will result in new insights into the occurring behaviour, and the ability to further test operational techniques to best improve or maintain permeability.

This will lead to the ability to maintain pumping pressures and rates which (a) increases production efficiency and (b) reduces the seismic risk. Hydreco Geomec will contribute knowledge on drilling, operations and give guidance on the practicality of the proposed operational interventions. This work will benefit from other projects taking place as part of the DAPwell research programme, for example thermo-hydro-mechanical testing of reservoir rocks and micro-structural scanning of reservoir cores. Geochemistry, microbiology and heterogeneity are also important in this topic and this project will benefit from the studies of ESR 1 and 8.

The aims of ESR2 are: a) to see how the pump pressure and temperature difference between injected water and hot reservoir can influence the initiation and propagation of thermal fractures at subsurface; b) to see how these thermal fractures can contribute to injectivity/permeability enhancement, which is helpful for maintaining geothermal project. To achieve these aims, we need two models, one simulating the fracturing processes while another for simulating wave propagation through rock induced by these fracturing events. So far, we have finished one review paper, which gives an overview about how the injectivity can be influenced during the whole geothermal operation chain. Now I’m working on the first model, of which the mathematic model has been finished. Next step is to solve the first model and compare the simulation results with field data.