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European Geoscience Union

Experiences and insight from Vienna

At the European Geosciences Union in Vienna KWR researchers gave one oral presentation, presented  several posters and organized a session. Ruud Bartholomeus gave an oral presentation on matching the agricultural freshwater supply and demand, by using industrial and domestic treated wastewater for subsurface irrigation purposes.
Martin Bloemendal and Jan Jaap had a poster on high temperature energy storage in the session about geothermal energy storage co-organized by Martin. Martin also had posters on his PhD topic on optimizing subsurface space use with ATES.

Matching water supply and demand for agriculture

Available groundwater sources for irrigation purposes are increasingly under pressure due to the regional coexistence of land use functions that are critical to groundwater levels or compete for available water. In the session on irrigated agriculture  different approaches to optimize the water availability for plants were highlighted. While most presenters focused on the improvement of the efficiency of different irrigation techniques, we emphasized the pros and cons of using ‘alternative’ freshwater resources in an area: Exploitation of treated wastewater  from industries and domestic wastewater treatment plants could be an effective strategy to balance regional water supply and agricultural water demand.

High temperature storage receives more and more attention.

In the session on geothermal energy storage new developments and insights on the different technologies in the geothermal energy range were presented and discussed. Striking were the many people working on geothermal storage at higher temperatures. All over Europe researchers acknowledge the large potential of high temperature storage in the energy transition. Like us at KWR, many people are trying to find ways for successful installation and operation of high temperature storage systems in aquifers.

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