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Halliburton introduces new pump technology designed for geothermal

According to Halliburton, the pump will offer an “efficient, safe, and agile solution that streamlines geothermal operations and enhances overall performance.” Photo via halliburton.com

Houston-based Halliburton has introduced a new technology that is designed specifically for geothermal energy applications.

The Summit ESP GeoESP is an advanced submersible borehole and surface pump technology GeoESP lifting pumps, which address challenges related to the transport of fluids to the surface through electric submersible pumps (ESP).

According to a news release from Halliburton, the pump will offer an “efficient, safe, and agile solution that streamlines geothermal operations and enhances overall performance.”

The inlet design minimizes power consumption, protects the pump against solids, and tackles scale formation. GeoESP lifting pumps can withstand extreme conditions with the ability to operate at temperatures up to 220°C (428°F) and can resist scale, corrosion, and abrasion.

GeoESP lifting pumps also use standard pump dimensions customized to suit various geothermal well conditions. With that, Halliburton will also offer a digital approach to geothermal well management with the Intelevat data science-driven platform to empower operators with real-time diagnostics and visualizations of “smart” field data. Halliburton states the system will improve well operations, increase production, extend system run life,reduce energy consumption, and minimize shutdowns.

“With increased global focus on low carbon energy sources, we are using our many decades of geothermal production expertise to help our customers maximize safety and improve efficiency,” Vice President of Artificial Lift Greg Schneider says in the release. “GeoESP lifting pumps build upon our current system to minimize power usage and help push the boundaries of what is possible with more complex well designs.”

Recently, more Houston-based companies have invested in geothermal technologies. GA Drilling and ZeroGeo Energy, a Swiss company specializing in renewable energy, announced a 12-megawatt Hot Dry Rock Geothermal Power Plant (Project THERMO), which is the first of several geothermal power and geothermal energy storage projects in Europe.

Additionally, Fervo Energy is exploring the potential for a geothermal energy system at Naval Air Station Fallon in Nevada. Sage Geosystems is working on an exploratory geothermal project for the Army’s Fort Bliss post in Texas. The Bliss project is the third U.S. Department of Defense geothermal initiative in the Lone Star State.

The Department of Energy announced two major initiatives that will reach the Gulf of Texas and Louisiana in U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm's address at CERAWeek by S&P Global in March. The Department of Energy’s latest Pathways to Commercial Liftoff report are initiatives established to provide investors with information of how specific energy technologies commercialize and what challenges they each have to overcome as they scale.

"Geothermal has such enormous potential,” she previously said during her address at CERAWEEK. “If we can capture the 'heat beneath our feet,' it can be the clean, reliable, base-load scalable power for everybody from industries to households."

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A View From HETI

Rice's Atin Pramanik and a team in Pulickel Ajayan's lab shared new findings that offer a sustainable alternative to lithium batteries by enhancing sodium and potassium ion storage. Photo by Jeff Fitlow/Courtesy Rice University

A new study by researchers from Rice University’s Department of Materials Science and NanoEngineering, Baylor University and the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Thiruvananthapuram has introduced a solution that could help develop more affordable and sustainable sodium-ion batteries.

The findings were recently published in the journal Advanced Functional Materials.

The team worked with tiny cone- and disc-shaped carbon materials from oil and gas industry byproducts with a pure graphitic structure. The forms allow for more efficient energy storage with larger sodium and potassium ions, which is a challenge for anodes in battery research. Sodium and potassium are more widely available and cheaper than lithium.

“For years, we’ve known that sodium and potassium are attractive alternatives to lithium,” Pulickel Ajayan, the Benjamin M. and Mary Greenwood Anderson Professor of Engineering at Rice, said in a news release. “But the challenge has always been finding carbon-based anode materials that can store these larger ions efficiently.”

Lithium-ion batteries traditionally rely on graphite as an anode material. However, traditional graphite structures cannot efficiently store sodium or potassium energy, since the atoms are too big and interactions become too complex to slide in and out of graphite’s layers. The cone and disc structures “offer curvature and spacing that welcome sodium and potassium ions without the need for chemical doping (the process of intentionally adding small amounts of specific atoms or molecules to change its properties) or other artificial modifications,” according to the study.

“This is one of the first clear demonstrations of sodium-ion intercalation in pure graphitic materials with such stability,” Atin Pramanik, first author of the study and a postdoctoral associate in Ajayan’s lab, said in the release. “It challenges the belief that pure graphite can’t work with sodium.”

In lab tests, the carbon cones and discs stored about 230 milliamp-hours of charge per gram (mAh/g) by using sodium ions. They still held 151 mAh/g even after 2,000 fast charging cycles. They also worked with potassium-ion batteries.

“We believe this discovery opens up a new design space for battery anodes,” Ajayan added in the release. “Instead of changing the chemistry, we’re changing the shape, and that’s proving to be just as interesting.”

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