GeoWell Project

GeoWell Project is rated 3 out of 5 in the category renewables & environment. Read and write reviews about GeoWell Project. GeoWell is a three-year collaborative research project funded by the EU under Horizon 2020 program. It will address important bottlenecks in geothermal development like high investment and maintenance costs by developing innovative materials and designs that are superior to the state of the art concepts. This will significantly enhance the current technology position of constructing and operating a geothermal well. The aim is to expedite the development of geothermal exploitation globally. Challenges: Harsh geothermal environment implies: • Need for assessment of cement curing and durability • Corrosion of metals • Various casing failures due to thermal expansion and high temperature • Assessing the potential of using high-temperature composite casings Approaches: • New concepts and technologies to improve well integrity • Design and conception • Numerical simulation (thermal, mechanical, geochemical) • Modelling of cement evolution with temperature, validated by lab experiments • Corrosion testing in situ • Material selection • Well monitoring by fibre optic sensing technologies • Developing tools for risk assessment in geothermal wells • Test/Validation in laboratories Outcome: • Improvement of cement curing by reducing water content • New cement formulations • Casing material resisting corrosion • Corrosion resistance of cladded materials • Prototypes of flexible couplings allowing thermal expansion and retraction of casings • Raising the temperature limit of composite casings • Risk and reliability analysis tools • Tools for fibre optic distributed sensing technologies