Philipp Wolpert was born on the 04.12.1983 in Stuttgart.
After graduating from High School, he did one year of social service and another year of "Work & Travel". He then studied Geosciences with focus on Sediment Geology at the Eberhard-Karls Universität Tübingen and the Universidad de Los Andes in Mérida Venezuela. For his Master thesis, he did a fieldwork study in Saudi Arabia about the Sulaiy Carbonate Formation. After receiving his Diploma in 2011, he started to work for Fronterra Integrated Geosciences in Aberdeen/Scotland where he worked as a Geologist performing different reservoir studies, borehole images and well log analysis. After 2 years, he joined Shell at the Projects & Technology Center in Rijswijk/The Netherlands. Part of his works was geological core description, digitization, mapping as well as sequence stratigraphic analysis of borehole images and 3D reservoir modeling.
During his works doubts raised and he was looking for new opportunities within the alternative energies. Very soon, the deep geothermal energy came into focus, as it is a very important part to generate electricity as well as an important part of the energy change in Germany. It also showed that the deep geothermal energy is right at the beginning and there are still many things to do, to improve the exploration process. Therefore, he decided to work on his PhD about the characterization and modelling of the South-German Upper Jurassic with a new sequence stratigraphic approach, consisting of a 1D - 2D - 3D workflow, which represents a technology transfer from the oil and gas exploration, and is investigating completely new aspects and criteria for the geothermal exploration process.
„Geothermal Reservoirs in the South-German Upper Jurassic: Characterisation and Modeling with a new sequence stratigraphic approach"
The aim of the PhD project is to establish an exploration model and investigate a new exploration approach for the most important thermal water reservoir in South-Germany, the so-called "Malm" in the Molasse basin, based on sequence stratigraphic methods to investigate the complex geology factors that influence the deep geothermal projects. The planned deep geothermal projects have a very high technical and geological risk caused by the great depth (>4.500 m). The success of such projects depends of finding highly productive zones, which depend on the complex interaction of different geological factors. An intensive study of the important geological parameters would improve significantly the understanding of the deep geothermal energy within the Molasse basin. The Malm as deep-water aquifer in the Molasse basin is so far a very productive hydrothermal reservoir. There are several larger deep geothermal projects aiming to generate electricity and the expectations on the flow rates are extremely high. Because these projects are relatively new, the geological work is pioneering. Due to its heterogeneities, every geothermal well is still associated with a high geological risk concerning flow rates. A new exploration approach along with a sequence stratigraphic model and seismic stratigraphy is a further step for the success of the deep geothermal energy of the Malm reservoir.