Interlaboratory test for chemical analysis of geothermal fluids: A new approach to determine deep geothermal reservoir fluid composition with uncertainty propagation

Abstract

A representative fluid sampling of surface geothermal manifestations and its analytical data quality assurance and quality control (QA/QC) are challenging aspects of understanding the geothermal reservoir processes. To achieve these goals, an interlaboratory test for the chemical analyses of ten water samples: one synthetic water, two lake waters (i.e., duplicated), one stream water, and six water samples from two geothermal wells of Los Azufres Geothermal field (LAGF), Michoacan, Mexico, was conducted. The geothermal wells were sampled at four points: (1) total discharge of condensed fluid at the wellhead, (2) separate liquid condensed in the well separator, (3) flushed liquid at the weir box, and (4) separated vapor condensed at the well-separator (data taken from Verma et al., 2022). Sixteen laboratories from ten countries reported their results. The pH, electrical conductivity, Ca2+, Li+, SO4 2 B, and Si-total measurements were 8.35 ± 0.04, 12.25 ± 0.53 mS/cm, 25 ± 1 mg/l, 18 ± 1 mg/l, 569 ± 33 mg/l, 320 ± 21 mg/l, and 20.5 ± 0.7 mg/l, which are close to the conventional true values, 8.40, 12.31 mS/cm, 23 mg/l, 19 mg/l, 647 mg/l, 330 mg/l, and 20.0 mg/l, respectively. Analytical errors for major ions, Na+, Cl