Modelling heat and fluid flow during heating of a water filled mine shaft

Tools

Dassow, Jessica and Molnar, Ian and Flett, Graeme and Attili, Antonio and Burnside, Neil and Ewe, Win Eng and Flude, Stephanie and Mukherjee, Indrani and Tuohy, Paul and Wang, Huachuan and Yang, Shangtong and Shipton, Zoe (2026) Modelling heat and fluid flow during heating of a water filled mine shaft. Quarterly Journal of Engineering Geology and Hydrogeology. ISSN 1470-9236 (https://doi.org/10.1144/qjegh2025-121)

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Abstract

Decarbonising heat in combination with energy storage can be a key component on the way to achieving net zero. Hundreds of thousands of flooded, post-closure coal mine shafts are estimated to exist based on relevant mining authority databases across industrialised countries and we are proposing they should be considered an unused asset for large scale thermal energy storage. These numerous, pre-existing structures are often situated close to high population density areas and surrounded by insulating bedrock. There have been no completed Mine Shaft Thermal Energy Storage (MSTES) pilot studies to-date; as a result, its feasibility and performance as a heat storage system for district heating networks remains untested. The objective of this study is to conduct a CFD simulation of heat storage in a flooded Scottish mine shaft with a vertical closed loop heating system suspended in the top 50 m of the mine shaft to gain a better understanding of: temperature distribution in the shaft and surrounding environment, as well as any buoyancy-induced mixing with deeper mine shaft water below the heating system. The presented simulations focus on the heating phase of an MSTES operation over 10 days. In this scenario an unstratified shaft, selected for a MSTES pilot study, is heated from a small closed loop pipe with varying temperatures and heat transfer coefficients from the pipe to the water. The result provide assurance that a pilot test at the site can be delivered safely, and opens the possibility of future full-commercial scale projects.

ORCID iDs

Dassow, Jessica, Molnar, Ian, Flett, Graeme ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8255-5223, Attili, Antonio, Burnside, Neil ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4110-2623, Ewe, Win Eng ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0416-0963, Flude, Stephanie ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0511-0116, Mukherjee, Indrani ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5817-4204, Tuohy, Paul ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4850-733X, Wang, Huachuan ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5307-3690, Yang, Shangtong ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9977-5954 and Shipton, Zoe ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2268-7750;
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