Field Test Investigation into Heat Transfer Performance of Coaxial Casing Heat Exchanger Associated with Deep Geothermal Wells

Rapid economic growth has directly driven up energy demand, and the gradual depletion of traditional fossil fuels has severely hindered sustainable development. Developing green and efficient geothermal exploitation technologies constitutes a crucial measure for tackling this sustainable development issue. This paper presents a field test associated with a clean energy system conducted in the Guanzhong Basin, China, with the core component of a coaxial casing deep geothermal well. A distributed temperature sensing system (DTS system) with over 3000 m-depth optical fiber installed and adopted to monitor near-wellbore formation temperature changes. Combining information on the inlet/outlet water temperature and flow rate monitored by an integrated temperature–pressure monitoring system, the heat transfer patterns during the operation of the deep geothermal well are deeply investigated. The research results demonstrate that a higher operation parameter of flow rates has a significant increasing effect on the heat transfer capacity of heat exchangers for coaxial casing deep geothermal wells. Although the increase in inlet temperature has minimal effect on the outlet temperature, it leads to a continuous decline in heat transfer capacity. In addition, as heat exchange duration extends, the geothermal gradient of the near-wellbore formation progressively declines.