ICELANDIC GEOTHERMAL SYSTEMS
As a Fulbright Scholar to Iceland (Winter 2010 - Summer 2011), Tom worked with the Icelandic Geosurvey (ÍSOR) to determine homogenization temperatures of quartz-hosted fluid inclusions from drill cuttings extracted from wells in the Hellisheði geothermal area. A thick (>500m) ice sheet must have been overlying the geothermal system at the time of fluid entrapment in order to explain the derived boiling curve.
Reykjanes Geothermal Power Plant in Iceland (2011).
SEISMOLOGY AND GEOTHERMAL ENERGY
2D temperature profile calculated from Vp values at the Cove Fort-Sulphurdale Geothermal Area, Utah.
While a Research Assistant at MIT (Summer 2009 - Winter 2010), Tom worked with seismologists Nafi Toksöz and Haijiang Zhang to estimate subsurficial temperatures at the Cove Fort-Sulphurdale Geothermal Area in Utah, United States using double difference tomography and experimentally-determined dVp/dT values for granitic rocks. Results of the study show a zone of elevated temperature beneath the active geothermal area relative to the ambient geothermal gradient.
ENHANCED GEOTHERMAL SYSTEMS IN NEW HAMPSHIRE
For Tom's B.A. honors thesis at Harvard University, he calculated thermal properties of New Hampshire granitic rocks (thermal conductivity, heat capacity, radiogenic heat production) using modal abundances of constituent minerals and whole-rock concentrations of U, Th, and K. Documented high heat flow in central New Hampshire (see Geothermal Map of North America) pointed to a possible Enhanced Geothermal System (EGS) resource within the Conway Granite. Heat flow modeling with the values calculated for New Hampshire granites indicate that the geothermal gradient is only slightly elevated within the radiogenic Conway Granite on account of its high thermal conductivity.
Source: (Benson, 2009)