The work in PERFORM focuses on implementation and evaluation of capabilities to control mineral scaling, particles clogging, corrosion and temperature/stress related effects of geothermal flow and injectivity.

Despite years of experience with geothermal systems, the geothermal sector still faces a significant number of underperforming doublets, posing a strong limitation on a region’s growth of geothermal energy utilization. A key operational challenge in geothermal energy production is restricted flow. Major obstacles for geothermal flow are scaling (mineral deposition), clogging (solid micro-particle deposition), corrosion and inefficient injection strategies. These issues result in high and mostly unforeseen costs for workovers, and additionally reduce production. In order to overcome these challenges, the consolidation and sharing of knowledge, including validated strategies for prevention and mitigation needs to be in place.

The overarching target of PERFORM is to improve geothermal system performance, lower operational expenses and extend the life-time of infrastructure by the concept of combining data collection, predictive modelling, innovative technology development and in-situ validation. The improvement of geothermal plant performance from the proposed work is expected to result in an increase of the energy output by 10 to 50%. In order to reach this goal PERFORM will establish a single and shared knowledge database, build predictive models and demonstrate new and improved, cost-effective technologies which will reduce or even eliminate flow-obstructive scaling, clogging, and resistance to fluid (re-)injection at eight geothermal plants across Europe.