The Advanced Energy Consortium (AEC) at the Bureau of Economic Geology, University of Texas-Austin, was formed with a vision: to facilitate precompetitive research in micro- and nanotechnology materials and sensors that have the potential to create a positive and disruptive change in the recovery of oil and gas from new and existing reservoirs. And it’s gaining ground on that vision at seemingly impossible speed.

Formed in 2008, the consortium has supported more than 30 universities in its history, 20 of which are currently receiving funding. “It’s not that we’re shrinking; it’s that we’re more targeted,” said Scott Tinker, director of the consortium. Tinker and Associate Director Jay Kipper have just completed a biannual all-projects review with sponsors and cooperating universities. While the details of these reviews are proprietary, the general direction of the research shows great promise, and already some of the technologies are moving toward actual field deployment.

Lab on a chip

As far-fetched as it sounds, this is now a reality. The AEC has engineered a chip that’s about 1 cu. mm and has power, a sensor, storage, downloadability and a coating that keeps it safe. All of these parts are interchangeable.

“This is the thing we knew would take the longest and be the hardest,” Tinker said. “We have a little lab on a chip that’s gotten remarkably smaller than we thought it would be by now.” It’s visible only with a magnifying glass, he added.

What’s the point of a lab on a chip? In the oil and gas industry, something that’s the size of a grain of sand could come in quite handy in applications where operators actually use sand, like hydraulic fracturing. “When we started in 2008, people were doing fracturing, but not to the extent that they’re doing it today,” Kipper said. “We’re building these micro- and nanoscale sensors for applications that are constantly changing and developing over time.

“There are a lot of moving pieces. It’s the science, and it’s the particular applications that the industry is calling for.”

Other applications might include putting the sensors into a reservoir that’s undergoing waterflooding to see where the water goes or deliver things into the reservoir to enhance recovery. “Right now we put a variety chemicals or CO2 into the reservoir for enhanced recovery,” Tinker said. “Maybe some of those could be nano-sized to get in places where other approaches can’t and/or do something when they get there that other approaches don’t.”

Reservoir characterization is another area of promise for nano-sized particles. Already “nanobots” are used in a variety of applications, and according to nanobot.info, “advanced nanobots will be able to sense and adapt to environmental stimuli such as heat, light, sounds, surface textures and chemicals; perform complex calculations; move, communicate and work together; conduct molecular assembly; and, to some extent, repair or even replicate themselves.”

According to Kipper, some companies have talked about using nanobots to essentially crawl around the reservoir and bring back information. So far they report success at the wellbore scale.

“There’s talk about going further into the reservoir and making some adjustments,” he said. “We’re walking down that path, and we’ve got some nice small devices that are being designed to go out there. We would collect them and interrogate them to find out what they’ve seen.”

Added Tinker, “Another way to better characterize the reservoir is to enhance what the existing tools can see. We’re working on putting things into the interwell space that enhance what seismic and magnetics detect, to enhance the near-wellbore environment but see farther out than logs can see. That will definitely help with reservoir characterization.”

Building that car

With six years of research behind it, the AEC is starting the process of integrating what up to now have been separate research thrusts. Tinker and Kipper use the example of building a car. So far one team has been working on the chassis while another team works on the engine.

“Now we’re integrating all of these pieces together to have an application that makes sense to our membership,” Kipper said. “We’re building that car as we’re going.”
While the metaphor of transportation works for the integration process, Tinker said that the idea of self-propelling nano-agents is “kind of an urban legend. It’s a huge challenge of communication in the interwell space.”

Nanotechnology in the future

Tinker said that the AEC members “seem pretty happy” about the consortium’s progress to date. “However, our member companies have to see us continue to move toward application and get use out of this,” he said. “That is why we are now moving into developing use cases.”

He predicted that within five years the use of nanotechnology for reservoir characterization and EOR could be fairly routine. But he doesn’t anticipate turning off the lights and locking the doors any time soon.

“As we move into the application space, several companies are looking to join the AEC. My guess is that we’ll have some new members, and the consortium will continue to be strong,” he said. “The value proposition is one of extracting more molecules economically. Mobility, enhancing contrast of existing technologies, active sensing in the reservoir—these have been our fundamental research directions and continue to be our directions to extract oil and gas more efficiently and economically. What makes this exciting is that it’s a whole different space in terms of researchers. It’s chemists, physicists, mathematicians, biologists—a whole different group of students.

“We’ve supported more than 400 students through the program, and they’re getting employed in the industry. They never would have been in the oil and gas business without the AEC.”

Added Kipper, “Really, it’s the development of a whole new scientific space. That in itself is exciting.”

No longer is nanotechnology a solution looking for a problem to solve. “I think that over the years the AEC has been able to show the problems that nanotechnology can help us solve,” he said. “The question has been whether it’s really feasible. What we’ve found is it’s not 100% feasible in every venue, but there truly are opportunities for nanotechnology, and we’re developing down those paths and coming up with specific applications that make economic sense.”

Medical nanotechnology

The Advanced Energy Consortium (AEC) is developing sensors and nanotechnology that are based on medical nanotechnology. One of these is called a contrast agent. According to Sean Murphy, a scientist with the AEC, a contrast agent is similar to an MRI and uses magnetic nanoparticles plus a large source and receiver to monitor the movement of a waterflood.

A second class of sensors is called nanomaterials sensors. These resemble the cancer-specific binding molecules being used in medicine, which can be heated to burn the cancer cells without harming surrounding tissues. The AEC is adapting this technology to free up oil molecules more easily from the surrounding rock.

Another area being examined will be based on time-release medicines. These nanosensors can be coated with substances that predictably degrade over time to deliver chemicals and tracers in the reservoir.

Acknowledgment
This information comes from an interview that Sean Murphy and Jay Kipper did with EarthSky.org.