aiqbench analysis
This research applies diffusion models as computational surrogates to accelerate reinforcement learning for enhanced geothermal systems, significantly reducing the reliance on expensive high-fidelity hydrothermal simulations. By integrating these learned environments with Proximal Policy Optimization, the framework achieves efficient real-time control over long production horizons while maintaining competitive performance against direct simulator-based methods. The study highlights a practical pathway for deploying advanced AI techniques in complex industrial optimization problems where simulation costs are prohibitive.
Efficient Geothermal Well-Control Optimization via Diffusion-Surrogate Reinforcement Learning
arXiv:2608.28791v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Real-time decision-making for enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) is challenging because long-term production periods involve high-dimensional control spaces and a large number of time-consuming high-fidelity hydrothermal simulations. Reinforcement learning provides a natural framework for state-dependent sequential control, but direct policy training with numerical simulators is computationally expensive. To address this issue, we propose a diffusion-surrogate guided reinforcement learning framework for long-horizon EGS well-control optimization. The reservoir temperature and pressure fields are used as system states, while injection rates are selected as control actions. A learned surrogate environment is constructed using conditional diffusion models to predict the evolution of reservoir temperature and pressure fields and a separate reward model to estimate the corresponding economic return. The surrogate environment is then integrated with Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) for efficient policy training. Experiments on a fractured EGS benchmark show that the diffusion surrogate can accurately reproduce reservoir-state evolution over multiple control stages. The resulting surrogate-assisted PPO policy achieves competitive well-control performance compared with direct simulator-based PPO and existing optimization methods, while substantially reducing the dependence on expensive high-fidelity simulations. These results demonstrate the potential of diffusion-based surrogate environments for efficient reinforcement learning in geothermal well-control optimization.
Abstract:Real-time decision-making for enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) is challenging because long-term production periods involve high-dimensional control spaces and a large number of time-consuming high-fidelity hydrothermal simulations. Reinforcement learning provides a natural framework for state-dependent sequential control, but direct policy training with numerical simulators is computationally expensive. To address this issue, we propose a diffusion-surrogate guided reinforcement learning framework for long-horizon EGS well-control optimization. The reservoir temperature and pressure fields are used as system states, while injection rates are selected as control actions. A learned surrogate environment is constructed using conditional diffusion models to predict the evolution of reservoir temperature and pressure fields and a separate reward model to estimate the corresponding economic return. The surrogate environment is then integrated with Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) for efficient policy training. Experiments on a fractured EGS benchmark show that the diffusion surrogate can accurately reproduce reservoir-state evolution over multiple control stages. The resulting surrogate-assisted PPO policy achieves competitive well-control performance compared with direct simulator-based PPO and existing optimization methods, while substantially reducing the dependence on expensive high-fidelity simulations. These results demonstrate the potential of diffusion-based surrogate environments for efficient reinforcement learning in geothermal well-control optimization.
Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI)
arXiv:2608.28791 [cs.AI]
(or arXiv:2608.28791v1 [cs.AI] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2608.28791 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)
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