Date: May 13, 2014 Author: Karen Boman Source: Company Data (
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Oil and gas companies are testing the potential of talking cement to address safety and environmental issues that surround cementing issues in wells.
Oceanit, which is headquartered in Honolulu, Hawaii and has offices in Washington, D.C., Houston and El Granada, Calif., has formed a joint industry program (JIP) with major oil and gas companies and the U.S. Department of Energy to explore the potential for an additive mixture, developed through nanotechnology research, to address wellbore integrity and zonal isolation in wells.
This technology is expected to significantly impact well economics by preventing catastrophic well blowouts and addressing environmental barriers by safeguarding aquifers, said Vinod P. Veedu, director of strategic initiatives at Oceanit, in an at interview with Rigzone at the 2014 Offshore Technology Conference last week in Houston.
To create the sensing cement, Oceanit blends with cement an additive mixture comprised of nanomaterials. In the mixing process, the nanomaterials are uniformly dispersed through the cement, forming a network of reliable materials that can be externally pinged and get some signal out, whether it's under 100 or 10,000 pounds of pressure. The big value of the sensing cement, Nanite, is that the material itself becomes the sensor, whether it's for 100 pounds or 10,000 pounds of pressure.
Information can be derived from the cement through electrical, acoustic or electromagnetic approaches. With an electric approach, the change in the bulk electrical properties based on an external trigger is measure, such as when pressure from a load isapplied. Currently, Oceanit is customizing Nanite for oil and gas operations so that existing acoustic logging tools canping the cement and gain similar information as Oceanit using the electrical mode.
"This path is possible only due to the fact that the nanomaterials that we use in the additive are also acoustically responsive," Veedu explained. "One key benefit to the acoustic-based approach is that, this way, the technology development period will be significantly reduced since the industry could potentially use the same tools that they are used to."
The smart, sensing and durable Nanite material will revolutionize oil drilling operations by addressing safety and environmental concerns, said Veedu.
Nanite was initially developed through the company's internal Innovation Fund, which funds every six months the development of a "crazy idea". Veedu submitted the idea of using a cheap material to develop a sensor, or making dumb material smart.
The technology's potential has been tested in the defense and transportation sectors, such as sensing tiles for a secured facility or measuring weight and monitoring stress on roads. In these cases, the nanomaterial additive was mixed with concrete. Oceanit was asked when it started talking with oil and gas companies three years ago whether the technology could be adopted for cement.
To test Nanite's potential for oil and gas, a JIP that includes two large international oil companies and a national oil company and a smaller player was formed. Testing began last November; the JIP is expected to last between two and a half and three years. The oil and gas JIP is testing Nanite's potential for better zonal isolation in shale gas wells; in the Gulf of Mexico, Nanite will be tested to determine its potential for preventing another catastrophic well blowout.
Almost all the work under the JIP will focus on proving the material in lab scale and preparing it for field testing; along the way, some other milestones that the JIP partners are interested in also will be evaluated.
"From an industry standpoint, the goal is to determine where did the cement go and how is it doing."
In 2008, Nanite won the NASA Nano 50 Award, which recognizes the top 50 technologies, innovators and products that impact nanotechnology and industry. Oceanit has four patents related to this technology, said Veedu.
Founded 28 years ago as an engineering company, Oceanit focuses on creating innovative solutions for energy, aerospace, engineering, information systems, life sciences and manufacturing, borrowing ideas from different fields to address technological challenges. For the past few years, the company has been working on the development of a nano drug delivery system for breast cancer. An Oceanit spinoff company, Hoana, has been working on a hospital bed with sensors that can monitor patients' vital signs.
