Fluid Level and Methane Monitoring Strategies for the Renewell Energy Storage System
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- About 85 percent of the United States’ energy use comes from nonrenewable fossil fuels such as oil and natural gas. There are now over 3 million abandoned oil and gas wells in the U.S., many of which are not monitored for leaks or gas pollutant emissions. Pollution from wells can have a negative effect on the environment such as contaminating local water sources and accelerating the effects of climate change. To address this problem, Renewell plans to install “Gravity Well” storage systems within inactive wells that would allow for continuous renewable energy storage. After filling a plugged wellbore with packer fluid, Renewell plans to lower a weight into the fluid and use its movement along with a regenerative winch to create an energy storage system that connects to local renewable energy power grids. Our group was tasked with creating a fluid and methane monitoring design for Renewell’s system to ensure the environmental and operational safety of their “Gravity Well”. Our system must be able to detect fluid pollution by measuring fluid level changes while also keeping track of any noticeable amounts of methane gas leaking from the plugged well. Our fluid and methane monitoring system design is composed of a submersible pressure sensor submerged in the packer fluid to track expected fluid level and a methane gas detector installed under a sealed wellhead. We created a monitoring design capable of detecting a minimum fluid level change of 2.5” and minimum detectable methane concentrations of 200 ppm which helped us meet Renewell’s required sensing criteria. These figures were justified through prototyping and testing our sensors within a downscaled wellbore simulation. In addition to creating a new monitoring system that is not currently used for wells, our design also takes into account Renewell’s system specifications for scalability and future development.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Date created | 2021 |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Pinto, Sarah |
|---|---|
| Author | Thompson, Victoria |
| Author | Malacon, Edward |
| Author | Sosa-Lesso, Eric |
Subjects
| Subject | Renewell |
|---|---|
| Subject | Wellbore Monitoring |
| Genre | Student project report |
Bibliographic information
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- User agrees that, where applicable, content will not be used to identify or to otherwise infringe the privacy or confidentiality rights of individuals. Content distributed via the Stanford Digital Repository may be subject to additional license and use restrictions applied by the depositor.
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
Preferred citation
- Preferred Citation
- Pinto, Sarah; Thompson, Victoria; Malacon, Edward; Sosa-Lesso, Eric. (2021). Fluid Level and Methane Monitoring Strategies for the Renewell Energy Storage System. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at: https://purl.stanford.edu/qg430nz8472
Collection
ME170 Mechanical Engineering Design
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- engreference@stanford.edu
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