Geological data reinterpretation

During the European Geosciences Union General Assembly held in April 2016 in Vienna (Austria), the results of one the Cheap-GSHPs project tasks was presented together with one of the tasks outcomes in the poster session “Development of strategies towards a sustainable intensive thermal use of the shallow subsurface”.

This poster – “Cheap-GSHPs, an European project aiming cost-reducing innovations for shallow geothermal installations. – Geological data reinterpretation” – shows the definition of generalized geological contexts with regard to the geological variability of the underground conditions in the Cheap-GSHPs partner countries. Therefore, a database of the European Soil Data Centre (ESDAC) was chosen to receive some INSPIRE (Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe) conformal data of underground properties. A SGDBE (Soil Geographical Database) called PAR-MAT-DOM was selected to be the most practicable data set for receiving relevant underground data in terms of geothermal properties and drillability. PAR-MAT-DOM stands for dominant parent material and is divided into 212 sub-units which contains geological and pedological information of a certain area. To make it more clearly ESDAC provides also a second data base called PAR-MAT-CON1 which consists of nine major groups which were fed by the 212 subunits of the PAR-MAT-CON dataset. With regard to the project issues it was decided to merge these two data sets into a data set which contains the following major groups:

• No Information;
• Igneous &Metamorphic Rocks;
• Consolidated Sedimentary Rocks;
• Unconsolidated Material (undefined);
• Sand (unconsolidated);
• Clay (unconsolidated);
• Gravel (unconsolidated);
• Organic Material.

In relation to these newly defined major groups, called FAU_PAR-MAT-CON, the drillability of the underground was analysed together with the drilling companies involved within this project. As result it is possible to advise, within the limits of specific local conditions, drilling techniques in terms of time and/or in terms of cost to certain areas all over Europe.