Our founders’ careers as inventors have always centred on reducing waste and increasing efficiency. Working in a diversity of industries, including food packaging, infrastructure access, electricity use, security, etc their approach to problem solving together brings new approaches to old problems. Their approach with Geo-Engines 10 years ago was the most ambitious yet, to decarbonise high-pressure, high-temperature, natural gas production. Natural Gas is broadly recognised as a key component in the energy transition; it is a much cleaner energy source than oil or coal and an important industrial ingredient. It is also a major source of hydrogen through reforming and pyrolysis, with the later capable of generating hydrogen with no associated CO2 generation, provided carbon neutral electricity is used.
Natural gas, like oil, is generated deep underground from organic rich source rocks, commonly created deeper than oil, it permeates vertically up from it’s source to eventually be trapped in a rock reservoir. Natural gas extraction has traditionally focussed on the shallowest reservoirs, as these are easier to drill into, but a hundred years of extraction has depleted many of these shallow reserves, forcing exploration companies to search deeper into the earth. These deeper reservoirs are more challenging for O&G companies, as the deeper they drill, the hotter the rock is and the higher the pressures are. With increased heat and pressure comes increased costs as all material specifications have to be improved to combat the extreme conditions at depth.
Aware that these high-pressure, high-temperature reservoirs pose a financial problem for developers, at Geo-Engines we set about trying to improve the economics of production by creating new value for producers and reducing the need for conventional power generation. It turned out that deep, hot, high-pressure gas is exactly what is needed to generate geothermal power, the difficulty lay in harvesting this geothermal energy without changing the natural gas. With the help of Lloyds Register and the financial support of the UK Government we set about designing a system that can work with very hot, very corrosive gases and liquids 24/7 to produce carbon neutral geothermal energy. The result is the Geo-Engine, a unique patented solution to energy extraction working at the limits of the industries drilling technology.
When installed on high-pressure and high-temperature gas wells Geo-Engines convert some of the heat and some of the pressure into carbon neutral geothermal power. This can be used as electricity by the operator to replace hydrocarbon based power generation for drilling, geological injection, gas cleaning and gas compression. This in turn eliminates the carbon footprint of gas production, with large gas fields capable of producing enough geothermal electricity to feed local grids and support unrelated industries such as data centres, refining or water purification.
After designing a solution for hot, high pressure natural gas we turned our attention to other potential uses of the Geo-Engine, which we will discuss in detail shortly.
Geo-Engines welcomes discussions with operators, researchers and industry partners interested in advancing geothermal energy from deep wells.
