Monday, 12 September 2011
The DoE awarding $38m to Geothermal Technology Development
Last week, on 8 September, the U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced $38m to thirty-two projects as part of the Geothermal Technology Program support. I list below some of the project titles that I interested me. Not much is given away inthe DoE announcement. It would be good to know a bit more about the objectives of some of these projects.
Hattenburg Dilley & Linnell, LLC (Anchorage, AK) received $330k for a project that will evaluate the chemical, thermal and permeability characteristics of a geothermal reservoir using chemical signatures that are trapped inside minerals to increase exploration drilling success rates. Hattenburg Dilley & Linnell is an engineering consulting form operating out of Alaska. They are developing a new method, Fluid Inclusion Stratigraphy (FIS), based on measuring the gas concentrations trapped within minerals for evaluating the hydrological regime in geothermal reservoirs. Rock chips are collected during the drilling of geothermal wells and from these rock chips the trapped fluids and gases are released and analyzed using a quadrupole mass spectrometer. I may be mistaken but this sounds similar to some pf the QGECE PhD projects. For example, Alex Middleton's work on European and Queensland granite samples indicates that there may be a connection between the geochemistry of the rock and the secondary permeability of the reservoir at that horizon. Alex present his progress in the AGEC2011 Conference in November.
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Los Alamos National Laboratory (Los Alamos, NM) received up to $1.6m with an objective "to reduce the cost of geothermal energy by developing an innovative method that combines high pressure impulses and thermal gradients to drill through hard rock". I have no idea what this means but sounds interesting. Los Alamos of course had the track record in advanced drilling technologies, including high-temperature downhole motors. I am not sure how this is related.
There a number of projects working on temporary sealing: Sandia ($400,000) and Brookhaven ($300,000) in two separate projects to develop sealers to prevent fluid loss during drilling. Clean Tech Innovations, LLC (Bartlesville, OK) ($500K) to modify a gel to isolate lost circulation zones. On a more intriguing note, Impact Technologies ($1m) will "examine the feasibility of employing intense radiation technology to drill and seal off the walls of geothermal wells." Brookhaven National Laboratory received another $300k "to develop a multi-functional cement to protect geothermal wellbores against common geothermal failure risks such as thermal cycling, thermal expansion, and corrosion".
Two big chunks of money (probably matched by contributions from the companies themselves) go to Atlas Copco and Baker Hughes in two separate grants. Atlas Copcy Secoroc received up to $3.4m for high temperature drilling technologies. Baker Hughes received up to $5m to develop high-temperature real-time downhole logging systems.
Potter Drilling, Inc. (Redwood City, CA) received up tp $1.5 million to continue work on their thermal drilling project. It is good that support for Potter Drilling continues. It would be good to get an update on the progress. I checked the Potter Drilling web site but the newest posting was almost a year old.
Geothermal Expandables received up to $1.5m improve upon existing casing designs by increasing the effective diameter of production wells -- presumably by reducing the casing wall thickness.
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On a completely different matter, I read on the UQ Newsletter just now that The University of Queensland has again been ranked as one of the world's top 50 universities for the eighth year in a row in the QS World University Rankings released today. The QS academic survey is based on survey responses, with 34000 academics surveyed in 2011. Apparently, the university achieved a score of 94.4 for its academic reputation, giving it a world rank of 45, a further improvement from its 54th ranking last year.
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