Water Reactive Alloys with Artificial Intelligence, Smart Plugs Formulation for the Middle East and North Africa

Abstract

Technology gaps to harness source rock or shale, unconventional reservoirs in the Middle East and North Africa pose unique challenges. Carbonate reservoirs, supplying Ca2+ ions resulting in passivation of traditional magnesium-based water reactive alloy alloys and abundance of H2S/CO2 rich production fluids at high pressure high temperature downhole conditions cause unpredictable degradation of plugs. This leads to the technology gap, an economical prediction mechanism to assess the degree of dissolution for deployed tools, which has prevented rapid uptake of water reactive alloys in these markets. Here we present, materials and methods to design and manufacture water reactive (fully dissolvable) alloy plugs for multi-stage stimulation (MSS) AKA hydraulic fracturing for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). The backbone of our water reactive plug is a self-articulating amorphous and bulk nanocrystalline alloy and/or partially or fully vitrified dissolvable material with artificial intelligence (AI), sensing in its DNA, with an ability to learn from the environment it is deployed in. Additionally, these materials will deploy articles that relay information from downhole to surface without conventional telemetry. Other embodiments of the technology building blocks encompass novel, multi-layered smart water reactive nano-materials, further enhancing tailored and timed dissolution.