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In the last 10 years numerous research and commercial initiatives have been undertaken in Europe to develop abandoned coal mining fields into low-temperature resources. One of the most successful is the Minewater project of the municipality of Heerlen, the Netherlands, where a low-temperature district heating system was launched in operation in October 2008, under the European Interreg IIIB NWE programme and the 6th Framework Program project EC-REMINING-lowex. The Minewater project is now being upgraded from a straight forward pilot system to a full-scale hybrid sustainable energy structure called Minewater 2.0. A totally new concept which becomes an essential part of the Sustainable Energy Structure Plan of Heerlen and has the following landmarks: Energy exchange instead of energy supply: cluster grids for energy exchange between buildings and the existing mine water grid for energy exchange between cluster grids. Energy storage and regeneration in mine water reservoirs instead of depletion. Addition of poly-generation: bio-CHP, solar energy, feed in of waste heat (data centres and industry), cooling towers for peak cold demands. Enlargement hydraulic and thermal capacity mine water grid through improving well pumps, pressure boosting systems and reuse of the existing mine water return pipe for additional supply and disposal of hot mine water. Fully automatic and demand-driven supply of hot and cold mine water through usage of pressurized buffer systems at the extraction wells and sophisticated injections valves at the injection wells. All geographically dispersed mine water installations at buildings, clusters and wells are equipped with sophisticated process control units that communicate with a Central Monitoring System (CMS) through the internet. A very new application in the build environment. The first phase of the Minewater 2.0 project is in operation since June 2013. In November 2013 at the congress we will be able to share the first experiences.
Verhoeven et al. (Wed,) studied this question.