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  Ollachea, an extreme thermal water Tunnel in the Peruvian Andes

  The Ollachea Tunnel is located in Puno (Peru), at an altitude of 2,700 m in the rainforest brow of the Andes. It is part of the South Interocean Highway, has a length of 906 m, an inner section of 80 m2, and has an intermediate emergency exit. It can be considered as a pioneering project in tunnelling since it is foreseen to encounter high enthalpy thermal underground water, with temperatures above 80°C. Up to date tunnelling thermalism has been reported in Iceland, and in the Andes, as the case of Cheves Hydroproject, but in all these cases maximum temperatures do not exceed 60° C. The paper describes the hydrogeological studies carried out in order to understand and define the expected water flow and temperature conditions in the tunnel. Accordingly, the layout of the tunnel was adjusted to minimize the thermal impact considering also the difficult geomorphological and structural geology conditions. The construction of the tunnel started last September 2020 confirming the foreseen conditions.

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