TCF - Sustainable Well Cement for Geothermal, Thermal Recovery, and Carbon Storage wells

Technical Report · Mon Jul 01 04:00:00 EDT 2024

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/2519653· OSTI ID:2519653

Pyatina, Tatiana ^[1]; Sugama, Toshifumi ^[1]

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1. Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), Upton, NY (United States)

Primary cementing is the most important operation performed on a subterranean well. Cement, placed in the annulus between the casing and the formations, serves as a hydraulic seal preventing fluids and gas migrations, protecting steel casing from corrosion, and supporting the well structure. Poor cementing jobs can be directly responsible for wells not reaching their full capacity, casing corrosion, compromised well integrity and, in the worst-case scenarios, well collapse. Geothermal, thermal recovery, and carbon storage wells offer environments that are especially difficult for cements to survive while the required lifespan of these wells can be years. In these wells currently used cements cannot provide durable well integrity, and new solutions are necessary. The necessity of stabilizing the electric grid, increasing its flexibility, and providing energy on demand will further expand the market of durable cement solutions for applications in high-temperature underground reservoir thermal energy storage wells (HT RTES). The design challenges of special cement systems for such wells originate from chemistry limitations of currently used well cements, aggressive environments, temperature and repeated shock conditions associated with them, and very weak formations that are not uncommon in these wells. During the last 70 years the most common systems for thermal-well construction have been Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC) (absolute majority of the wells), silica-lime system, and high aluminum cement-containing formulations. The major issues of calcium-silicate hydrates, that form during the hydration of OPC resulting in hardened material, are their poor chemical resistance to acids due to the calcium interactions with acid anions followed by its eventual dissolution, even in mild acids, such as carbonic acid from CO₂ dissolution, and inadequate bonding to the steel causing serious casing corrosion problems (Sugama & Pyatina, 2019). Performance of OPC-based cement may be significantly improved with organic additives; however, those are limited by their temperature stability. An alternative to calcium-silicate cement was developed by BNL and commercialized by Halliburton as ThermaLock^TM cement. Calcium-aluminate-phosphate-based chemistry of the material allowed overcoming acid-resistance problems of OPC, especially in CO₂-rich geothermal environments. In 2012-2015, building upon this experience, BNL developed Thermal Shock Resistant Cement (TSRC) with the support of Geothermal Technology Office (GTO) of DOE. TSRC has high-temperature stable chemistry, superior properties of cement-metal casing bond and corrosion protection (4-times better than currently used OPC-based formulation), significantly outperforms common well-cements in thermal-shock tests, has self-healing properties, and like ThermaLock^TM is CO₂ resistant incorporating carbonate ions into stable hydrates (Gill et al., 2012).

• Research Organization: Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), Upton, NY (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Renewable Power Office. Geothermal Technologies Office
• DOE Contract Number: SC0012704
• OSTI ID: 2519653
• Report Number(s): BNL--227572-2025-INRE
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

15 GEOTHERMAL ENERGY