Follow the explanation
Back to the model ↑How the parts work together
Start with a warm reservoir
The orange path rises from the deep reservoir to the turbine. Blue fluid returns through the condenser and injection well.
Raise reservoir temperature
A larger temperature difference means each kilogram can carry more heat: Q̇ = ṁ cₚ ΔT. Watch the thermal and electric readouts rise.
Increase mass flow
Doubling the flow doubles the ideal heat rate at the same temperature difference. The animation shows more moving markers, not a fluid-dynamics solution.
Separate heat from electricity
The selected efficiency is applied after heat rate is calculated. Real plants lose energy in wells, heat exchangers, turbines and generators.
The main parts
- Hot reservoir
- A porous rock zone supplies heat to the circulating fluid. The rock is drawn as a single uniform block, not a site model.
- Production well
- The hot fluid rises through this well. The arrow direction is the prescribed flow, not a pressure calculation.
- Turbine
- Thermal energy is represented as shaft work. Blade shape and two-phase flow are omitted.
- Generator
- The shaft drives an ideal generator with the selected conversion efficiency.
- Condenser
- The loop rejects heat and returns a cooler fluid to the injection side.
- Injection well
- Cooled fluid returns to the reservoir, closing this simplified circulation loop.
Questions worth exploring
What does a geothermal system need to make electricity?
Three things: hot rock, enough fluid to carry the heat to the surface, and permeability, meaning small pathways such as fractures that let the fluid move through the rock. Where rock is hot but lacks fluid or permeability, an enhanced geothermal system injects fluid to open fractures and build a human-made reservoir. The model draws the reservoir as one uniform block, not a real site.
U.S. Department of Energy · Geothermal electricity generationwww.energy.gov
What are the main types of geothermal power plant?
Dry steam plants send natural steam straight to a turbine. Flash steam plants take water hotter than about 182 °C to a low-pressure tank, where part of it flashes into steam. Binary-cycle plants pass cooler geothermal water through a heat exchanger to boil a second fluid with a lower boiling point, so the geothermal water never touches the turbine. The model is a generic loop and does not represent any one of these designs.
U.S. Department of Energy · Geothermal electricity generationwww.eia.gov
Why is cooled fluid returned underground?
After the steam or hot liquid has passed through the turbine and cooled, plants inject it back into the ground so it can be used again. In a binary plant the closed system also keeps the geothermal water out of the air. The injection well in the model closes the loop, with the return temperature fixed at 80 °C; it does not simulate pressure, reservoir depletion or wellbore flow.
www.eia.govU.S. Department of Energy · Geothermal electricity generation
How does the model calculate electric output?
It multiplies mass flow by the specific heat of water, 4.18 kJ per kg per °C, and by the temperature drop between reservoir and return to get a heat rate, then applies an efficiency you choose between 8 and 18 percent. Doubling the flow doubles the heat rate. The constant 4.18 is a simplification: tabulated values for liquid water rise to about 4.4 kJ per kg per °C near 180 °C. The result is a teaching estimate, not plant performance.