Report Q3FY21 - High-Resolution 3D Acoustic Borehole Integrity Monitoring

Technical Report · Wed Aug 18 04:00:00 EDT 2021

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/1814739· OSTI ID:1814739

Pantea, Cristian ^[1]

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1. Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)

Real-time, in-situ, high spatial resolution (sub-cm) imaging of the near-borehole environment would revolutionize wellbore diagnostics and integrity assessment by direct observation of defects. It is becoming increasingly apparent, that better understanding of the near-wellbore environment is required to meet the safety and operational needs in challenging environments such as those present in subsurface energy extraction (geothermal) and storage (CO₂ sequestration) applications. Therefore, it is important to have a more robust ability to image the near-borehole and reliably detect defects. It was proposed to further develop and improve our advanced 3D imaging system to evaluate casing defects (e.g. corrosion) and cement quality in either open- or cased-borehole with the ultimate goal to develop a commercially deployable technology. The system consists of a unique acoustic source (LANL) and advanced inversion techniques for image processing (LANL, ORNL). This system will provide comprehensive borehole integrity monitoring with improved resolution over existing techniques. As an application of this imaging system, we will characterize the effectiveness of next-generation wellbore completion technology (NETL, SNL), and will demonstrate that, unlike current technology, the proposed approach can successfully characterize foamed cements.

• Research Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)
• DOE Contract Number: 89233218CNA000001
• OSTI ID: 1814739
• Report Number(s): LA-UR-21-28285
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

42 ENGINEERING
Energy Sciences