Geochemical Sampling of Thermal and Nonthermal Waters in Nevada to Evaluate the Potential for Resource Utilization

Nevada has extensive geothermal resources; approximately 216 MW (net) of geothermally generated electricity are produced and low to moderate temperature geothermal fluids are used for space heating and in vegetable dehydration. There is great potential for more use of geothermal resources in all the above categories as well as industrial processing and mineral extraction applications. There are more than 350 known geothermal systems in Nevada; at least 30% of these do not have modern, complete water analyses based on the data compilation by Garside (1994) and Garside and Schilling (1979). Many of these have analyses from only one spring in a group of springs, but it is not known from which spring in a group that the sample was taken or if it was the highest temperature spring in that group. Additional data are available from a previously digitized database containing all springs and wells on 7.5′ quadrangles. From these digitized site locations, there are ≈ 1000 springs for which a location is known, but for which there are no available temperature (or chemical) measurements. Although many of these sites are within known geothermal areas and are located near springs for which temperature and/or geochemical data are available for one of the springs, many of these sites are not so located and require evaluation before the geothermal potential of the area can be assessed.