Robert Hack
phone:+31 (0)6 24505442; email: h.r.g.k.hack@utwente.nl Omgevingsdienst West Holland; 11 February 2019
The history of the ground and subsurface in our
region and what are to tasks to come
(De historie van de bodem en
ondergrond in onze regio en voor welke opgaven
staan wij nu)
▪ Going down through time – geological history ▪ What do we do in the underground
▪ What are the problems
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2019-02-11
The subsurface of OD West Holland - Hack 3
OD West Holland
To be able to answer:
We drill a borehole below Leiden
that brings us back in (geological) time
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What is the underground of OG
West-Holland?
To show the highly complicated processes and events that formed the materials we now use in the underground
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Geology & geological history
▪ Geology ranges over extreme long periods of time
Romans (2,000 year ago); Babylon (8,000); First modern humans (50,000); Last dinosaur ( 66 million); the
Earth (4.8 billionyear)
▪ The Earth is static on our human time scale, but highly dynamic on geological time scale
Continents collide & split; sea becomes land & land becomes sea; it is Siberian cold or tropical warm; volcanoes erupt & vanish
Geology & geological history (2)
The Netherlands have a volcano too: the
‘Zuidwal Vulkaan’ northeast of Texel on 2,000 meter depth and inactive for 160 million year
2019-02-11
The subsurface of OD West Holland - Hack 8
Geological
Time
What is the underground of OG
West-Holland? (2)
The bottom of the borehole is in Earth layers with an age of 370 Ma (i.e. 370 million years in the past) called the Devonian
This does not imply that the geology before that time is not of interest, but
▪ we have virtually no knowledge in The Netherlands and
▪ all existing activities are in younger deposits
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Back in time
The Earth looked completely different from the Earth today. Two continents had formed: Gondwana and Laurussia.
Parts of what later will be South-America, Africa, Antarctica, and India are part of Gondwana.
Laurussia contains large parts of what are to become Europe,
Greenland, and North-America.
370 Ma ago
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370-300 Ma
Gondwana and Laurussia collide and form the supercontinent of Pangaea
225-200 Ma Pangea starts to break up into the present-day continents.
175-145 Ma Africa rotates clockwise and moves away from Western Eurasia, but later reverses and collides with Eurasia in the Alpine Orogeny. This breaking-up is still ongoing, for example, the North Atlantic Ocean spreads by about 25 mm per year.
Pangaea breaks up
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Alpine orogenesis
145 Ma – present Alpine orogeny:
Africa rotates anti-clockwise, collides with
Eurasia and forms extensive mountain ranges, such as the Pyrenees, Alps, and Betics in Spain.
India collides with Laurasia and forms the Himalayas
The Earth was a devastated area after the impact of the meteorite or asteroid that created the Chicxulub crater in Mexico
The large reptiles (dinosaur) became extinct and gave space for new life forms: the present day living species
Paleogene - Neogene
At the end of the Neogene (Tertiary) Leiden is in a shallow sea in a slowly subsiding basin that is filled with the material of some large rivers (Eridanos, Rhine, and Meuse)
(about similar to the present situation, except that the Eridanos does not anymore exists)
Eridanos was a very large river flowing from Northern Russia (size half of the modern Amazon)
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Pliocene
▪ Time of the glaciations ▪ Leiden not covered by an
ice sheet but ice wall must have been visible to the north
▪ North Sea is dry during the glaciations
Quaternary - Pleistocene
▪ Climate change – warmer ▪ Glaciations only at the poles ▪ Sea level rise – North Sea filled
up
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Quaternary - Holocene
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Costs of energy
(average costs)
(Capacity factor = ratio of energy delivered
to maximum possible Total levelized cost ~ average cost)
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Exmples of geothermal energy in West
Holland
▪ Far deeper than Seasonal exchange (KWO opslag)
▪ Gradient 30-33 grad C/kilometer
▪ Water quantities: 150 - 300 m3/hrs (Boxem, 2015)
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▪ Aggressive water (with many minerals, e.g. salts)
▪ Bacterial grow in low and middle temperature installations (< 150º C) – resulting in aggressive and corroding fluids and cakes attacking pipes, boreholes, and reservoir rock
▪ Stimulation (fracking) is often required to increase permeability (low public acceptance)
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▪ Only heat if reservoir temperature < 130º C
▪ Electricity economical when temperature > 130º C
▪ Ultra deep > 4,000 m - little information (7 boreholes in NL) Temperature expected about 120º C
▪ Electricity from very deep reservoirs > 6,000 m (1 borehole in NL) (nobody knows what the geology looks like, and boreholes become very expensive with larger depth)
Problems with using geothermal energy
(2)
▪ High risk
▪ Recently two (producing) geothermal projects been halted by the Inspector of Mines (SoDM) (Limburg - because of earthquake risk) ▪ City of Groningen project stopped or halted because of earthquake
risk? (already invested in network for urban heat distribution)
▪ Many projects do not produce the forecast, or have problems with leaking or corroding boreholes, pipes and installations
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Problems with using geothermal energy
(3)
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Seasonal Thermal Energy Storage (STES)
Projects can interfere with each other or with the surface:
- Water convection along boreholes changes temperature of groundwater (effect also known from oil & gas industry)
- Temperature changes will initiate groundwater flows (and thus systems on some distance may influence each other)
- In- or decrease of temperature of ground and groundwater of possibly of concern for especially nature and agricultural areas
- (Speculative): possible decrease of ground and groundwater temperature due to extraction of heat by ground coupled heat exchangers may ease freezing of ground and groundwater in the shallow subsurface during (long) cold periods leading to damage of street surfaces, foundations, and small infrastructure in the shallow subsurface (likely not very severe, except near pipes to surface)
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Major problem for the coming years:
peat oxidation
▪ Land subsidence by millimeters to Centimeter(s) per year
▪ Can be reduced by increasing groundwater level to terrain surface ▪ May change land use in West Holland (no milk anymore)
▪ Climate change and (speculative) seasonal heat exchange may increase oxidation by increasing ground temperature
▪ Large area in and on weak ground (peat and clay) ▪ Better in and on Pleistocene sand
(as is common knowledge in West Holland)
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▪ Relative few activities in the deep subsurface because geology in the OD West Holland area not the most promising
▪ Geology down to about 3,500 m reasonably known, but knowledge still very short of what is necessary for decent projects
▪ Below 3,500 m very little known and thus even more highly uncertain
▪ Geothermal energy high-risk business with high investments and no certainty for success; not different from oil & gas industry in which investments of 10’s to 100’s of millions of Euros for one field are very common and many fields work out to be uneconomical (the single golden hit pays for many disasters)
▪ Consultants, project developers and owners are mostly very enthusiastic, but are often not hampered by much knowledge
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▪ Seasonal Thermal Energy Storage (STES) (WKO) when popular and used on extensive scale will interfere with each other and probably with surface applications
▪ Peat oxidation may require change of land use
▪ Difficult ground for foundations and underground works with clay & peat at many locations (but this nothing knew and well known)
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