(372m) Development of Deep Direct-Use Geothermal System on West Virginia University Campus-Morgantown, WV

The Morgantown campus of West Virginia University (WVU) is uniquely positioned to host the first geothermal deep direct-use district heating system in the eastern United States. While much of the eastern United States is not blessed with extremely high heat flow and elevated temperatures, the northeastern part of West Virginia is unique in having a basin that is expected to support the achievable flowrate of geofluid through target formations, with sufficient temperatures at depth. These two factors were identified in the 2006 MIT Future of Geothermal Energy Report to be the two most critical factors in minimizing cost of geothermal energy. Our overall project objectives is minimizing the delivered Levelized Cost of Heat (LCOH) by performing an integrated surface-to-subsurface optimization of the full Geothermal District Heating and Cooling (GDHC) system. In this work, the economic and performance analysis of the GDHC system is evaluated for two cases: 1) using existing district heating and cooling facilities, and 2) by converting the current WVU campus heating infrastructure to a hot water system. For first case, the steam needed will be supplied by a geothermal hybrid system, where condensate is preheated using geothermal fluid and is further heated to required conditions by either natural gas or biomass boilers. The hot water for the second case will be supplied by geothermal system alone. Performance of the GDHC system is modeled using Aspen Plus simulations and economic analysis is performed using GEOPHIRES (GEOthermal energy for the Production of Heat and electricity Economically Simulated) and feasibility of the GDHC system is determined by comparing costs and benefits with the existing system.

Acknowledgment: This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. DOE's Office of EERE under the GTO, under Award Number DE-EE0008105.