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The Minewater Project, based in Heerlen and other areas, aims to demonstrate how the geothermal energy stored by mine water can be used as a safe and ecological way to heat buildings. [1]
The aims of the pilot projects are:
The Minewater Project is supported by a grant from the European Union under the framework of the Interreg IIIB NWE Programme. There are five project partners and numerous European observers who are contributing their expertise and knowledge.
The total costs of the project amount to €20 million to which Interreg IIIB is contributing 48%. The Project began work in March 2005, and it will run until June 2008.
The scheme in Heerlen will be located at two areas of redevelopment in the town at Heerlerheide Centrum and Stadpark Oranje Nassau. These sites are 3.5 km apart situated to the north of the town and in the centre of the town, respectively. The two sites will part of one system that will be able to both heat and cool buildings.
Two wells will be drilled in Heerlerheide to a depth of 825 metres. Nearly a kilometre beneath the town water can be found at about 35 °C, like a warm bath. This task will not be easy and is likely to require 350 hours of continuous drilling. By the time the drilling is complete and tests carried out, engineers will know a lot more exact detail about the water temperature and quality, and the cost of using it.
At Stadpark Oranje Nassau the drilling does not need to be so deep, because the mineshafts themselves are not so deep. An intermediate well will be drilled to 500 metres and also two shallow 250 metre wells.
The shallow wells will receive the water from Heelerheide that has meanwhile been used for heating buildings. The heat will have been used up, so the water will fill the shallow wells at a temperature of 17 °C. This means that it can also be useful for cooling.
An autonomous building is a building designed to be operated independently from infrastructural support services such as the electric power grid, gas grid, municipal water systems, sewage treatment systems, storm drains, communication services, and in some cases, public roads.
Geothermal energy is the thermal energy in the Earth's crust which originates from the formation of the planet and from radioactive decay of materials. The high temperature and pressure in Earth's interior cause some rock to melt and solid mantle to behave plastically. This results in parts of the mantle convecting upward since it is lighter than the surrounding rock. Temperatures at the core–mantle boundary can reach over 4000 °C (7200 °F).
Heerlen is a city and a municipality in the southeast of the Netherlands. It is the third largest settlement proper in the province of Limburg. Measured as municipality, it is the fourth municipality in the province of Limburg.
A borehole is a narrow shaft bored in the ground, either vertically or horizontally. A borehole may be constructed for many different purposes, including the extraction of water, other liquids, or gases. It may also be part of a geotechnical investigation, environmental site assessment, mineral exploration, temperature measurement, as a pilot hole for installing piers or underground utilities, for geothermal installations, or for underground storage of unwanted substances, e.g. in carbon capture and storage.
Solar thermal energy (STE) is a form of energy and a technology for harnessing solar energy to generate thermal energy for use in industry, and in the residential and commercial sectors.
A cooling tower is a device that rejects waste heat to the atmosphere through the cooling of a coolant stream, usually a water stream to a lower temperature. Cooling towers may either use the evaporation of water to remove process heat and cool the working fluid to near the wet-bulb air temperature or, in the case of dry cooling towers, rely solely on air to cool the working fluid to near the dry-bulb air temperature using radiators.
Geothermal heating is the direct use of geothermal energy for some heating applications. Humans have taken advantage of geothermal heat this way since the Paleolithic era. Approximately seventy countries made direct use of a total of 270 PJ of geothermal heating in 2004. As of 2007, 28 GW of geothermal heating capacity is installed around the world, satisfying 0.07% of global primary energy consumption. Thermal efficiency is high since no energy conversion is needed, but capacity factors tend to be low since the heat is mostly needed in the winter.
District heating is a system for distributing heat generated in a centralized location through a system of insulated pipes for residential and commercial heating requirements such as space heating and water heating. The heat is often obtained from a cogeneration plant burning fossil fuels or biomass, but heat-only boiler stations, geothermal heating, heat pumps and central solar heating are also used, as well as heat waste from factories and nuclear power electricity generation. District heating plants can provide higher efficiencies and better pollution control than localized boilers. According to some research, district heating with combined heat and power (CHPDH) is the cheapest method of cutting carbon emissions, and has one of the lowest carbon footprints of all fossil generation plants.
Sustainable architecture is architecture that seeks to minimize the negative environmental impact of buildings through improved efficiency and moderation in the use of materials, energy, development space and the ecosystem at large. Sustainable architecture uses a conscious approach to energy and ecological conservation in the design of the built environment.
Steam-assisted gravity drainage is an enhanced oil recovery technology for producing heavy crude oil and bitumen. It is an advanced form of steam stimulation in which a pair of horizontal wells is drilled into the oil reservoir, one a few metres above the other. High pressure steam is continuously injected into the upper wellbore to heat the oil and reduce its viscosity, causing the heated oil to drain into the lower wellbore, where it is pumped out. Dr. Roger Butler, engineer at Imperial Oil from 1955 to 1982, invented the steam assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) process in the 1970s. Butler "developed the concept of using horizontal pairs of wells and injected steam to develop certain deposits of bitumen considered too deep for mining". In 1983 Butler became director of technical programs for the Alberta Oil Sands Technology and Research Authority (AOSTRA), a crown corporation created by Alberta Premier Lougheed to promote new technologies for oil sands and heavy crude oil production. AOSTRA quickly supported SAGD as a promising innovation in oil sands extraction technology.
The Oranje Nassau Mijnen was a coal mine company, established in 1893 by Friedrich Honigmann (1841-1913) and Carl Honigmann (1842-1903) to exploit the rich coal deposits in and around Heerlen. That there were coal deposits around Heerlen was already known for centuries, but efficient transportation was lacking. In 1886 Henri Sarolea had the idea of building a railroad between Herzogenrath, Heerlen, and Sittard, which was finished in 1896. It was this plan that prompted the building of the first mine.
The Oranje Nassau IV, the last and smallest mine exploited by the Oranje Nassau Mijnen, started its life as a ventilation shaft for Oranje Nassau III. In 1910 the construction of a mine shaft was started. However the construction was halted and only reassumed in 1919. In 1927 the mine became operational.
Seasonal thermal energy storage (STES), also known as inter-seasonal thermal energy storage, is the storage of heat or cold for periods of up to several months. The thermal energy can be collected whenever it is available and be used whenever needed, such as in the opposing season. For example, heat from solar collectors or waste heat from air conditioning equipment can be gathered in hot months for space heating use when needed, including during winter months. Waste heat from industrial process can similarly be stored and be used much later or the natural cold of winter air can be stored for summertime air conditioning.
Solar air conditioning, or "solar-powered air conditioning", refers to any air conditioning (cooling) system that uses solar power.
A ground source heat pump is a heating/cooling system for buildings that uses a type of heat pump to transfer heat to or from the ground, taking advantage of the relative constancy of temperatures of the earth through the seasons. Ground source heat pumps (GSHPs) – or geothermal heat pumps (GHP) as they are commonly termed in North America – are among the most energy-efficient technologies for providing HVAC and water heating, using far less energy than can be achieved by burning a fuel in a boiler/furnace or by use of resistive electric heaters.
Interreg is a series of programmes to stimulate cooperation between regions in and out of the European Union (EU), funded by the European Regional Development Fund. The first Interreg started in 1989. Interreg IV covered the period 2007–2013. Interreg V (2014–2020) covers all 27 EU member states, the EFTA countries, six accession countries and 18 neighbouring countries. It has a budget of EUR 10.1 billion, which represents 2.8% of the total of the European Cohesion Policy budget. Since the non EU countries don't pay EU membership fee, they contribute directly to Interreg, not through ERDF.
The potential for exploiting geothermal energy in the United Kingdom on a commercial basis was initially examined by the Department of Energy in the wake of the 1973 oil crisis. Several regions of the country were identified, but interest in developing them was lost as petroleum prices fell. Although the UK is not actively volcanic, a large heat resource is potentially available via shallow geothermal ground source heat pumps, shallow aquifers and deep saline aquifers in the mesozoic basins of the UK. Geothermal energy is plentiful beneath the UK, although it is not readily accessible currently except in specific locations.
Deep water source cooling (DWSC) or deep water air cooling is a form of air cooling for process and comfort space cooling which uses a large body of naturally cold water as a heat sink. It uses water at 4 to 10 degrees Celsius drawn from deep areas within lakes, oceans, aquifers or rivers, which is pumped through the one side of a heat exchanger. On the other side of the heat exchanger, cooled water is produced.
Aquifer thermal energy storage (ATES) is the storage and recovery of thermal energy in the subsurface. ATES is applied to provide heating and cooling to buildings. Storage and recovery of thermal energy is achieved by extraction and injection of groundwater from aquifers using groundwater wells. Systems commonly operate in a seasonal mode. The groundwater that is extracted in summer, is used for cooling by transferring heat from the building to the groundwater by means of a heat exchanger. Subsequently, the heated groundwater is injected back into the aquifer, which creates a storage of heated groundwater. In wintertime, the flow direction is reversed such that the heated groundwater is extracted and can be used for heating. Therefore, operating an ATES system uses the subsurface as a temporal storage to buffer seasonal variations in heating and cooling demand. When replacing traditional fossil fuel dependent heating and cooling systems, ATES can serve as a cost-effective technology to reduce the primary energy consumption of a building and the associated CO2 emissions.
Cold district heating is a technical variant of a district heating network that operates at low transmission temperatures well below those of conventional district heating systems and can provide both space heating and cooling. Transmission temperatures in the range of approx. 10 to 25 °C are common, allowing different consumers to heat and cool simultaneously and independently of each other. Hot water is produced and the building heated by water heat pumps, which obtain their thermal energy from the heating network, while cooling can be provided either directly via the cold heat network or, if necessary, indirectly via chillers. Cold local heating is sometimes also referred to as an anergy network. The collective term for such systems in scientific terminology is 5th generation district heating and cooling. Due to the possibility of being operated entirely by renewable energies and at the same time contributing to balancing the fluctuating production of wind turbines and photovoltaic systems, cold local heating networks are considered a promising option for a sustainable, potentially greenhouse gas and emission-free heat supply.
