124 Geothermal Power Plants: Principles, Applications, Case Studies and Environmental Impact

The last factor in the list has been exploited successfully for the Imperial Valley plants.
The geofluid is “seeded” with silica particles in large vessels called flash-crystallizers,
providing favorable precipitation sites for the supersaturated solution. After two stages
of this process, the precipitated silica is removed, dried, compacted, and disposed of.
The steam that is generated is ready for use in turbines and the waste liquid is clean
enough to be reinjected without fear of clogging the reservoir [8].

6.6.2 Silica scaling potential in flash plants

Since double-flash plants are often built on the hotter resources, the dissolved silica is
typically higher than for single-flash plants. Furthermore, because of the additional
flash process, the waste brine becomes more highly concentrated in silica than in a
single-flash plant.
The derivation of the working equations to describe the silica scaling problem is
based on Fig. 6.8; the reader should review it before proceeding.
Let us begin at state 1 where the geofluid exists at the reservoir temperature, t1.
It will carry a load of dissolved silica determined by the solubility of quartz. If we
assume the water is pure, then we can represent the quartz concentration with the
polynomial
QðtÞ 5 41:598 1 0:23932t1 2 0:011172t21 1 1:1713 3 1024 t31
ð6:25Þ
2 1:9708 3 1027 t41
where the temperature t is in degrees Celsius and the quartz concentration Q is in mg/kg
or parts per million (ppm). As the fluid undergoes various flashing and separation
processes, we will assume that the silica remains in the liquid phase. Thus the concen-
tration of the silica in the brine will increase according to the following analysis:
Qðt1 Þ
Sðt3 Þ 5 ð6:26Þ
12 x2
and
Qðt1 Þ
Sðt7 Þ 5 ð6:27Þ
ð12 x2 Þð12 x6 Þ
where S(t3) and S(t7) represent the silica concentrations in the liquid at states 3 and 7,
respectively. The symbol S is used to remind us that the controlling silica equilibrium
is that of amorphous silica, not quartz. Since the quality after each flash is about
0.12
0.15, the concentration will increase by roughly 15.5% after the first flash (well
to separator) and overall by 33.5% (well to waste brine from flash vessel).
Figure 6.15 shows the results of calculations for a single-flash plant at a 225 C
resource and a double-flash plant at a 250 C resource. The curve labeled Q is the
equilibrium solubility for quartz; the one labeled S is for amorphous silica. The line a-b
shows the increase in concentration of silica in the brine as it undergoes a 2-stage
flash process from 250 C to 117 C. The latter temperature is the flash temperature
found from the “equal-temperature-split” rule for an optimum double-flash plant with
a 50 C condenser. The vertical distance from point f to point b above the equilibrium
curve indicates that the solution is supersaturated with respect to amorphous silica,