Geoscience Lab

Local Production and Supply of Heat and Power

The Geoscience-Lab is a joint collaboration laboratory with the KIT Institute for Applied Geoscience (KIT-AGW) and is located at KIT Campus South. It has been inaugurated in 2008. The overall philosophy of the lab is to share the whole infrastructure and instruments between EIFER and the AGW. The Lab is dedicated to geo-technologies with currently a special focus on geothermal energy.

Practical oriented questions, new ideas and innovations are the main subjects of the lab activities. Generally, the Lab is working on market oriented and applied projects and the objective is to do a successive up-scaling from laboratory scale over pilot scale to field demonstrations and applications.

Activities

The aim of the Geoscience lab is to support the development of R&D and operational projects linked to underground issues (geothermal energy, CO2 underground storage, borehole heat exchanger) as well as to develop innovative solutions for the use of geothermal energy in different fields of applications. In this perspective, the whole range of fluid, rock and material characterizations can be done.

EIFER GeoLab_by Sandra Goettisheim Photographie
EIFER GeoLab_2_by Sandra Goettisheim Photographie
GeoLab_Eifer_by Sandra Goettisheim Photographie
Equipment
  • Two phase percolation tests up to 200 bar and 200°C
  • Mechanical test benches
  • Field test equipment (pumps, monitoring)
  • Tracer measurement equipment
  • Soil gas test equipment
  • Mercury porosimetry
  • Atomic adsorption spectroscopy
Corrosion and Scaling
  • Exposure and electrochemical tests
  • Test of new inhibitors
  • Special tool for collecting brine on-site under keeping pressure and temperature constant (ARIANE)
Pilot and Field Experiments
  • Test fields for Borehole Heat Exchanger
  • New innovative Thermal Response Tests set-up
  • New innovative solutions like self-circulating heat pipe solutions
  • New innovative monitoring tools e.g. GEOSniff
Examples of Current Projects
  • GERDi (BMWi 2019 – 2022) Efficient recovery of damaged borehole heat exchanger.
  • Program-Oriented Funding (Helmholtz Society, since 2015) Corrosion and Scaling in geothermal applications.
  • FloodRisk (BMBF 2020 – 2023) Earthquakes, uplift, eternity loads – Minimizing of risks during flooding of mines.

Laboratories

EIFER/ICT
Lab

ENERMAT Platform

FC Test
Lab