Articles techniques et présentations

One of the crucial topics in this century is sustainable energy. In this respect, the exploitation of geothermal energy from deep hot aquifers becomes opportune. Hence, insight is required in the heat balance of potential aquifer systems. Essential issues are convection, conduction and dispersion. This article focuses on Lauwerier’s problem. As an extension, it is suggested that beside convection in the aquifer and conduction to adjacent layers also conduction in an aquifer can be considered in a simple way. For a characteristic situation, a comparison is made with the result of the numerical code COMSOL. This gives new insight in the possible misjudges of heat transport simulations due to numerical effects and in the applicability of models.