GE, NETL TO TEST MULTI-POINT SENSING SYSTEM FOR CO2 STORAGE WELLS

Tamar Hallerman
GHG Monitor
10/12/12

GE announced late last week that it has signed a two-year contract with the National Energy Technology Laboratory to test a sensor system that aims to continuously monitor CO2 in harsh environments like storage wells. GE Global Research, the company’s technology development arm, said that the $1.2 million joint venture project with the lab will begin in January and could aid in the development of resilient and “highly accurate” monitoring, verification and accounting equipment that could help ensure the certainty of sequestered CO2 by detecting potential leaks sooner.

GE said it will be testing a fiber optic cable spliced with multiple sensors that can continuously measure temperature and pressure at single points inside a well at very harsh conditions. The technology is based on similar equipment developed for geothermal containment wells. “[For the geothermal work], we developed an extremely accurate pressure sensor for down-hole measurements, but it was a single point measurement, just at the end of the cable,” Bill Challener, principal investigator and physicist at GE, said in an interview this week. “It was designed for these high temperature, high pressure environments where electronics generally are not able to operate.” Given that the geothermal-based technology only uses one sensor, GE will look to add and test multiple sensors along the length of the cable to get a more accurate reading of CO2 plume movement. “The cable and outer packaging technology that we designed for geothermal should be adequate for these new applications as well, although part of this project is to test and verify that,” Challener said. “Typically these cables are made from steel alloys that are very resistant to corrosion under harsh environment conditions. However, the inside of the packaging will undergo considerable changes where we have to redesign our optical interrogation system.”

Challenger added that the technology could also be applicable to oil and gas wells or other settings with harsh environments such as jet engines where getting an accurate reading of pressure is necessary. He said the technology is significant because few competitors can operate so accurately at such high temperatures of 300° Celsius or more.