UC Davis Institute of Transportation Studies

A model is developed to estimate water requirements for electricity from various forms of geothermal resources. It considers two types of hydrothermal resources, wet steam and hot water, as well as enhanced geothermal systems (EGS). Electricity can be generated using flash or binary (organic Rankine cycle) technology depending upon the temperature and pressure of geothermal fluid. Power plants can use three different types of cooling technologies – wet re-circulating, dry systems, and hybrid cooling systems. Requirements are calculated separately for freshwater, degraded water and geothermal fluid.