Mine water heat and heat storage research opportunities at the UK Geoenergy Observatory in Glasgow, UK

Abstract

<p>Mine water geothermal heat production and storage can provide a decarbonised source of energy for space heating and cooling, however the large resource potential has yet to be exploited widely. Besides economic, regulatory and licensing barriers, geoscientific uncertainties such as detailed understanding of thermal and hydrogeological subsurface processes, resource sustainability and potential environmental impacts remain.</p><p>The UK Geoenergy Observatory in Glasgow is a research infrastructure for investigating shallow, low-temperature coal mine water heat energy resources available in abandoned and flooded mine workings at depths of around 50-90 m. It is an at-scale ‘underground laboratory’ of 12 boreholes, surface monitoring equipment and open data. The Glasgow Observatory is accepting requests for researchers and innovators to undertake their own experiments, test sensors and methods to increase the scientific evidence base and reduce uncertainty for this shallow geothermal technology.</p>

Drilling into mines for heat: geological synthesis of the UK Geoenergy Observatory in Glasgow and implications for mine water heat resources

“…The gravel size was chosen to correspond to the screen slot size. After problems were encountered with borehole GGA02 (Monaghan et al 2020c), an optical camera and caliper wireline Here we provide a synthesis integrating the twelve new boreholes with legacy data.…”

“…The boreholes are arranged in a triangle to characterise depth and spatial variability in 3D over 10-100's m (Figure 2). A sixth borehole (GGA02) was drilled as a mine water borehole but encountered problems in the final stages of construction and is now a cased, sensor testing borehole to around 67 m depth (Monaghan et al 2020c). The mine water boreholes are equipped with sensors for time-series monitoring of the subsurface.…”

“…Sealing of the Glasgow Upper and Glasgow Ell mine workings in borehole GGA02 en-route to the Glasgow Main target took time (Monaghan et al 2020c). The mine water chemistry results from the Glasgow Upper working in GGA02 and Glasgow Main working in GGA05 were critical in proving similar groundwater chemistries.…”

“…The 3 m thick void-waste-wood returns and CCTV data from GGA08 indicated that a roadway had been penetrated with wooden supports still in place. In the third Glasgow Main borehole (GGA02), the mine working was not recognised during drilling and is interpreted as a clean collapse (Monaghan et al 2020c).…”

“…during drilling, the rock chip returns indicating a presumed clean collapse of the sandstone roof (Monaghan et al 2020c).…”