Macroscopic permeability progression of Nanan granite under confining pressures and its microscopic evolution after cooling at atmospheric pressure: A comparative study

Permeability is one of the key factors for influencing the mass transfer behavior in rocks and plays a key role in heat extraction of enhanced geothermal systems (EGSs), so the practice of EGSs needs cooling water to be injected to enhance the permeability within geothermal reservoirs. Macroscopic and microscopic experimental investigation on how cool water affects permeability evolution is still limited. To solve this, we experimentally explored the permeability evolution of Nanan granite after air and water cooling under different confining pressures combined with optical microscopy and X-ray micro computed tomography (CT) observation. Lots of microdefects were observed in Nanan granite after two cooling paths, which dominantly drives the evolution of permeability from a microscopic scale. The permeabilities of granite under water-cooling conditions are always larger than those under air-cooling conditions, because the comparison shows that water-cooling treatment enhances the permeability of specimens. The permeabilities of granite specimens after two cooling paths decrease with the confining stress. More microcracks and better connectivity among microcracks produce a larger permeability within the specimen after water cooling. The observed microcracks are regarded as the seepage channels and direct microscale evidence of the permeability evolution of granite after two cooling paths. Our results provide support that cooled water injection is an efficient way for permeability enhancement due to thermal microcracks propagation in thermal simulation.