Geothermal Energy in Sudan

Today’s post (24) Sudan has a very interesting Central African Shear Zone (CASZ) crossing the country with several major rift systems intersecting it from the southern side. The CASZ terminates at the Red Sea rift system. All these geological features have areas of high heat flows with good geothermal temperature gradients.

Coming next (25) South Sudan. A few other countries remain, but working on them to post sometime later. If you missed a country of interest, drop us an email and we can share it.

To help eliminate Energy Poverty, a resilient Energy Mix can make good use of the domestically available, economic, environmentally sustainable, dispatchable baseload of Geothermal Energy.

  • The terrain of Sudan is dominated by desert in the North and arid or semi-arid elsewhere, with the Blue and White Nile being the only permanent water courses from which hydroelectric dams generate much of Sudan’s electrical power. Beneath the Central African Shear Zone there is a thinned lithosphere with higher heat flux linked to magma ascent and granitoid intrusion events;
  • Multiple areas show significant geothermal energy potential, including:
  • Four covered rift basins (Bara, Kosti, Khartoum, and Atbara) intersect CASZ in the east-central area with crustal thinning coupled with passive mantle uplift;
  • The Cretaceous to Tertiary Muglad Rift Basin of interior Sudan, part of the Central African Rift System;
  • Areas of Tertiary to Recent volcanism, such as the volcanic field in the Bayuda desert and Jebel Marra volcanic complex, where hot springs have temperatures up to 850C;
  • The Red Sea coastal plain where wells have recorded temperature gradients of up to 40oC/km and heat flows in the range of 100mW/m2;
  • Clean, environmentally sustainable renewable Geothermal Energy would be possible thanks to modern, low and medium enthalpy Binary ORC power generation solutions. Good geoscience tools are available to help incrementally explore and de-risk the areas of potentially suitable heat energy sources before more expensive drilling is required;
  • Very attractive Levelised Cost of Electricity (LCOE) is commercially feasible for some developments to help improve electrification, reduce reliance on carbon fuelled power plants and hydropower plants, reduce energy poverty, and increase grid resilience for Sudan. Increased electrical supply will also support domestic conversion of raw materials to capture more value for Sudan.

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