Integral equation solution of heat extraction from a fracture in hot dry rock

In the study of heat extraction by circulating water in a fracture embedded in geothermal reservoir, the heat conduction in the reservoir is typically assumed to be one dimensional and perpendicular to the fracture. In this p aper, we demonstrate that by an integral equation formulation utilizing Gre en's function, the multi-dimensional heat flow in the reservoir can be mode lled. In the resulting numerical solution system, the discretization of res ervoir geometry is entirely eliminated, leading to a much more efficient sc heme, The multi-dimensional heat conduction effect as compared to its one-d imensional simplification is studied. Copyright (C) 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.