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CLEANSORB’S INNOVATIVE CHEMISTRIES CAN IMPROVE EFFICIENCY OF GEOTHERMAL WELLS

Investment in oil, natural gas and coal has fallen during the current downturn.

Renewable energy, which is becoming increasingly cheaper to produce, has shown resilience in this environment: attracting increasing global funding and sitting firmly front and centre of global policy, especially following the Paris agreement.

Geothermal energy is part of this diverse mix of power generation alternatives: a viable, potentially significant renewable resource that is low carbon, sustainable and can provide a continuous supply of heat and/or electricity.

 

Geothermal challenges

While geothermal energy is increasingly commercially viable, technical challenges include achieving efficient removal of drilling damage, avoiding natural fractures intersecting the wellbore from being plugged, maintaining or increasing the conductivity of natural fractures connected to the wellbore and removal of production related scale.

Cleansorb’s pioneering reservoir chemistry may be applied to geothermal wells to address all of these technical challenges, without risk to the environment. For example, in many cases Cleansorb can provide food grade proprietary chemicals for geothermal applications and Cleansorb continues to introduce low hazard alternatives to existing hazardous chemicals.

 

DEEPA™  Cost effective fracture enhancement and safe scale treatment

Cleansorb’s high performance, uniform deep matrix acidizing technology (DEEPA) is particularly effective for increasing the conductivity of fractures in carbonate reservoirs or for uniform dissolution of carbonate scale.

DEEPA scale removal treatments are highly effective and achieve optimal acid delivery without high pump rates. In-situ acid generation ensures uniform delivery of organic acid.

Laboratory-validated DEEPA fracture enhancement and scale removal treatments are simple to use, mix and pump with standard equipment. They are non-hazardous, reducing the HSE risk, and protect the asset, company and contractor personnel as well as the environment.

 

ORCA™ for WBM – Cost effective drilling damage removal

Where wells are drilled with carbonate-polymer drill-in fluids, or with water in carbonate formations, Cleansorb’s proprietary and patented low hazard ORCA for WBM formulations may be used to remove drilling damage including filter cake and any low-permeability compressed zone which may lie behind the filter cake following drilling in carbonate formations. The treatment may be applied in new wells or as a remedial treatment.  ORCA for WBM’s unique combination of in-situ acidizing and polymer breaking in a single treatment fluid has already been used for highly effective removal of WBM drilling damage in newly drilled geothermal wells.

 

Avoiding drill-in fluid losses to natural fractures while drilling 

Cleansorb also has development products for temporarily plugging fractures when mud losses are encountered, but which subsequently slowly dissolve to restore open fractures.

 

Transferrable innovation

Cleansorb’s field-proven chemistries, originally developed for oil and gas applications, are being viably configured for geothermal applications. This underpins the company’s record of engineering innovative chemical products that efficiently and safely improve well performance, while minimizing risk to people and the environment.