NEWS

23 May 2022

CeraPhi\’s Andy Wood credited in a technical paper presented in GeoConvention in Calgary.

\’Nahanni Butte is a small community of under 100 people in the south-west corner of Northwest Territories. Presently, the electricity needs of the community are powered by a diesel generator. The heat for the community is provided by oil fired furnaces, oil

fired hydronic systems in larger buildings (c.f., Band office and gym), and combustion of wood in individual residences. To increase the community’s energy stability and reduce their carbon emissions, geothermal energy was evaluated for both heat and power generation. Conventional geothermal energy was evaluated for the community, however, the upfront capital cost on a per person for this small community made this solution un-fundable at this point in time. As an alternative, a deep, closed loop, borehole heat exchanger was evaluated for heat production. CeraPhi Energy’s proprietary closed loop CeraPhiWell™ (monobore) system was evaluated. The advantages of this system is it can be deployed in a single, small diameter borehole. Locally available diamond drill rigs running relatively inexpensive HQ drill bit (63.5 mm) sizes can be used. While this solution has better per person economics for the community, it would involve extensive retrofitting of existing heat infrastructure, due to the lower temperatures of the produced fluids than the existing hydronic systems. This limits the applicability of this technology within this community to new residential and commercial buildings, where the heating systems can be designed for the lower temperature fluids circulated by the district heating system. While this area of the NWT has good geothermal potential, the technology implemented needs to consider the community’s needs and future development plans in order to find the best application of renewal energy solutions whether it be geothermal technology, or hybrid systems such as waste heat recovery from existing diesel generation, thermal-solar and/or wind generation coupled with heat storage.\’

To view the full poster click here.