Permanent Electric Power Supply for Down Hole Devices in Oil and Gas Wells

Abstract

All present time, most of downhole electrical devices operate either retrievable "rechargeable batteries" or permanent electric or fiber cable extend from surface till the bottom associated with high risk and high cost operations. Commonly both retrievable and permanent devices have advantage such as live data and easy communication. However, the disadvantages are temperature limitation, high cost, high risk, and restrictions moreover not suit many other completion scenarios and wells completion types. Most of memory gauges could read with 5 sec rate up to 43 days in temperature range 150 C, and it will reduce to 18 days when temperature increase up to 200 C. even increasing the time by reducing number of decimals for the recorded values. However, memory gauge stop working when kept for sleeping mode more that 15 sec. This research propose a new strategy, road map and conceptual design with different scenarios that aim to overcome the previous disadvantage through generating electrical power through a special downhole turbine utilizing new concept through wells injection and/or production flow rates. The new recommended turbine either to be installed as a part of the completion as permanent or to be run as retrievable. Moreover, turbine has the ability to generate mandatory power to operate downhole devices fitting any sensors. (eg. memory gauge) The new self power turbine create a new strategy for gas, oil and water wells completion to be more advanced with no need for the rig to change the completion, tubing and/or install cables. Theoretically the research succeeded by mean of installing a turbine to generate constant D/C current that could power up any attached memory gauge. This turbine depend on it is design on two main concepts; the first is how to direct the flow toward the blades and the second is how to maximize the vortex effect to maximize velocity and control turbulence, take in consideration hole accessibility for any operation required.

Research on the self-powered downhole vibration sensor based on triboelectric nanogenerator

“…Therefore, researchers tried to studied the downhole turbine as a new way for power generation, and results are currently mainly focused on two aspects, namely, one is to improve the ability of downhole turbine to adapt to higher temperature and higher pressure, 12,13 and the other is to optimize the blade structure to improve power generation efficiency. 14–16 Although the downhole turbine can effectively avoid the shortages of battery and cable power supply, it has high requirements for mud flow and viscosity, so it is only suitable for a few specific drilling processes. Therefore, the vibration sensor with self-powered function can not only solve the problem of downhole vibration measurement, but also is expected to solve the problem of downhole power supply, which will undoubtedly be more suitable for the downhole environments.…”