Over significant areas of the UK and western Europe, anthropogenic alteration of the subsurface by mining of coal has occurred beneath highly populated areas which are now considering a multiplicity of 'low carbon' unconventional energy resources including shale gas and oil, coal bed methane, geothermal energy and energy storage. To enable decision making on the 3D planning, licensing and extra...

The natural convection flow over a surface embedded in saturated porous media is encountered in many engineering problems such as the design of pebble-bed nuclear reactors, ceramic processing, crude oil drilling, geothermal energy conversion, use of fibrous material in the thermal insulation of buildings, catalytic reactors and compact heat exchangers, heat transfer from storage of agricultural...

The 2013 Pacific Coast Action Plan on Climate and Energy signed by the Governors of California, Oregon, and Washington and the Premier of British Columbia launched a broadly announced public commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through multiple strategies. Those strategies include the development and increased use of renewable energy sources. The initiative recognized that citizens are...

Based on the analysis of geothermal research and utilization, this paper lists the most main challenges of geothermal exploration and exploitation at present in Beijing which is including the lack of regional reconnaissance, the undeveloped of prospecting techniques, the shortened of service life in those geothermal fields which are exploited unreasonably, the unsystematic of dynamic monitoring...

The use of near-surface geothermal energy, which in Berlin means up to a maximum depth of 100 m, can draw on a wide spectrum of technological possibilities. All these procedures require heat pumps capable of increasing the relatively low temperatures of the subsoil or the groundwater at these depths, of between 8 and 11 °C, to a higher temperature level suitable for heating purposes, with the a...