Review of the Low-Enthalpy Lower Cretaceous Geothermal Energy Resources in Poland as an Environmentally Friendly Source of Heat for Urban District Heating Systems

Abstract

The paper presents a review of the geological and hydrogeological data of the Lower Cretaceous aquifer in the Polish Lowlands and discusses the possibilities for the utilisation of geothermal water resources in existing and new district heating systems. Based on experience related to the use of thermal waters in existing geothermal systems, and using data from the literature, assessments have been made of the energy and environmental effects of the application of low-enthalpy geothermal resources from the Lower Cretaceous aquifer as a source of heat for urban district heating systems. The authors concluded that the implementation of such solutions could result in the production of approximately 4 PJ of geothermal energy annually. To date, these resources have only been developed in three locations—Mszczonów, Uniejów and Poddębice—with the total amount of energy generated annually reaching 100 TJ/year. Similar district heating networks in 120 nearby localities have been also identified. Here, specified geological and hydrogeological conditions enable the extraction of heat from the investigated Lower Cretaceous aquifer, with the aim of using this for heating purposes. To achieve this goal, multiple measures are required, including the following: raising public awareness through appropriate education programmes aimed at the youngest school children; systemic, efficient energy management measures at the central, regional and local levels, and providing financial support and ensuring regulations and laws aimed at improving the development of geothermal resources.

Reconstruction of geothermal boreholes in Poland

“…Wellhead temperature of these waters range from 20 to 94 °C (the latter value in the axial part of the Mogilno-Łódź Trough, at a depth ca. 2.6 km), but geothermal waters with temperature up to While the geothermal waters produced from the Lower Cretaceous strata are usually low mineralized (TDS from less than 1 g/ dm 3 to 50 g/dm 3 , locally also in excess of 100 g/dm 3 ; Pająk et al 2020), waters drawn from the Lower Jurassic formation often exceed 100 g/dm 3 , and locally even over 250 g/ dm 3 . High mineralization of these waters pose a significant problem for geothermal installation due to high susceptibility to corrosion.…”

“…One should not forget about the energy value additionally obtained through the use of heat pumps and the potential use of reservoir water. Chilled geothermal water can also be used as a drinking water directly from the well, for e.g., from wells in Mszczonów and Poddębice in Poland Pająk et al 2020), or after treatment with reverse osmosis technology (Tomaszewska 2008;Tomaszewska and Dendys 2018). Abandoned deep wells can be also adapted to requirements of enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) or deep borehole heat exchanger (BHE) technology.…”

Energy and Exergy Analysis of Sensible Thermal Energy Storage—Hot Water Tank for a Large CHP Plant in Poland

“…Heat can also be produced ecologically using renewable energy sources [6]. Examples of this are solar collectors [7,8] and geothermal sources [9][10][11][12][13][14]. Heat can be also produced on a large scale, e.g., for a whole city (so called District Heating System-DHS) [15][16][17][18][19].…”

The comparison of solar installation heat gains and SHW simulation results – case study

“…Single--family home users can take advantage of the limited possibilities of clean heat production. These methods are: heat pumps, solar collectors, PVT (Calise et al 2019), cogeneration as biomass and natural gas (Kryzia et al 2020;Matuszewska et al 2017) and geothermal heat only in selected areas (Pająk et al 2020). The selection of renewable energy sources is connected with conducting a simulation of heat production in relation to internal (mainly heat demand, heat temperature required) and external conditions (such as: ambient temperature, wind speed, solar radiation density) (Canales et al 2020).…”