From The South China Morning Post
- Scientists have developed an ‘energy rod’ that can fire multiple shock waves to frack sedimentary rock at depths of up to 3.5km
- China has the world’s largest reserves of natural gas but current mining technology makes most of it inaccessible
PUBLISHED : Sunday, 27 January, 2019, 12:00am
UPDATED : Sunday, 27 January, 2019, 11:29pm
China is planning to apply the same technology used to detonate a nuclear bomb over Hiroshima during the second world war to access its massive shale gas reserves in Sichuan province. While success would mean a giant leap forward not only for the industry but also Beijing’s energy self-sufficiency ambitions, some observers are concerned about the potential risk of widespread drilling for the fuel in a region known for its devastating earthquakes.
Despite being home to the largest reserves of shale gas on the planet – about 31.6 trillion cubic metres according to 2015 figures from the US Energy Information Administration, or twice as much as the United States and Australia combined – China is the world’s biggest importer of natural gas, with about 40 per cent of its annual requirement coming from overseas.
In 2017, it produced just 6 billion cubic metres of shale gas, or about 6 per cent of its natural gas output for the whole year.
Photo: Xinhua
The problem is that 80 per cent of its deposits are located more than 3,500 metres (11,500 feet) below sea level, which is far beyond the range of hydraulic fracturing, the standard method for extraction.
But all that could be about to change, after a team of nuclear weapons scientists led by Professor Zhang Yongming from the State Key Laboratory of Controlled Shock Waves at Xian Jiaotong University in Shaanxi province, released details of a new “energy rod” that has the power to plumb depths never before thought possible.
Unlike hydraulic fracturing, or fracking as it is more commonly known, which uses highly pressurised jets of water to release gas deposits trapped in sedimentary rock, Zhang’s torpedo-shaped device uses a powerful electric current to generate concentrated, precisely controlled shock waves to achieve the same result.
He told the South China Morning Post that while the technology had yet to be applied outside the laboratory, the first field test was set to take place in Sichuan in March or April.
“We are about to see the result of a decade’s work,” he said.
Chen Jun, a professor at Southwest Petroleum University in Chengdu, Sichuan’s capital, is not involved with the programme but said he was eagerly awaiting the results of the trials.
“A technological breakthrough could trigger another shale gas revolution,” he said.
Shale gas is another name for methane (or natural gas) that is trapped in impermeable rock deep underground. Unlike conventional natural gas which is in permeable rocks, shale gas does not flow and so cannot be reached by simply drilling a well.
The widespread use of fracking in the United States began in 2007 and heralded a boom in energy production in the country. In the decade that followed its natural gas output rose 40 per cent, prices fell by more than two thirds and America went from importer to exporter.
One of the main reasons for the success of the so called shale gas revolution was the relative accessibility of the fuel. In many cases, including at several sites in Pennsylvania and New York state, the deposits were found just a few hundred metres below ground.
The deeper the shale beds, the higher the water pressure needed to frack the rock and release the gas. Reaching China’s reserves, at 3.5km (2.2 miles) underground, would require a water pressure of about 100 megapascals, or about the same as is found at the bottom of the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean, the deepest point on Earth.
No pump, pipe or drill shaft wall material has the strength to withstand such a crush.
No surprise then that previous efforts to tap into China’s rich gas seams by state-owned energy giants like Sinopec and CNPC, often working in partnership with US firms, failed to deliver.
Unlike conventional natural gas which is in permeable rocks, shale gas does not flow and so cannot be reached by simply drilling a well. Photo: Bloomberg
Zhang hopes his alternative, developed by a team that has worked on some of the world’s most advanced nuclear weapons systems, can change all that, but he also knows the proof of the pudding is in the eating.
“The technology was born in a dust-free laboratory,” he said. “Not many people believe it can be used in a mine.”
Zhang and his team have dubbed their creation an “energy concentration rod” as it is able to control the release of explosive bolts of energy into an extremely short, precisely calculated period of time so as to maximise the fracturing effect of the shock waves.
It works by passing a strong electric current along a specially coated wire coil – encased by a metal shell – that is submerged in water. When the wire vaporises it produces a cloud of plasma – the extremely hot, electrically charged matter that makes up the sun – within which is a huge amount of energy just waiting to be released.
“The shock wave generated by the device can be as high as 200 megapascals at close range, which is expected to produce a fracture zone up to 50 metres in diameter,” Zhang said.
The method, known as exploding wire, enables scientists to control the energy, duration and even direction of the explosion. The same principle was used to detonate the atomic bomb code named “Little Boy” that was dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.
Despite that commonality, Zhang’s device does not create a nuclear blast, so is fundamentally different to what the United States was doing in the 1960s, when scientists there detonated a nuclear bomb underground to boost natural gas production. The former Soviet Union also used thermal nuclear weapons for mining and in dam construction.
Also, unlike a traditional detonator, which fires just once, Zhang’s energy rod has been designed to withstand hundreds of massive blasts.
After each one, the rod is hoisted back up the shaft and a jet of water is injected under high pressure into the cavity to further open up the rock. The rod is then lowered back into position and is ready to fire again.
The device can “generate shock waves repeatedly … like a machine gun”, Zhang said, adding that because the wire was encased and submerged the rod did not generate sparks, so reducing the safety risk.
While the scientist has concerns about how well his creation will work in shale rock, it has already been used to release potentially hazardous gas deposits from coal beds and is now recommended by the government as a way to improve both safety and productivity in the mining industry.
Chen Jun, a professor at Southwest Petroleum University in Chengdu, said a technological breakthrough could trigger another shale gas revolution. Photo: Bloomberg
Wang Chengwen, a professor at the China University of Petroleum in Qingdao, Shandong province, said that one of the advantages of the new technology was that it was potentially more environmentally friendly than other fracking methods.
The waste water generated by traditional shale gas production contained large amounts of toxic chemicals that could contaminate rivers and underground water sources, he said.
However, it was yet to be seen if the force generated by the rod would be enough to fracture rocks at such extreme depths, he said.
HT/The GWPF
UPDATE: Some people in comments are calling this article “clickbait” because the system uses the word “Nuclear”, and they can’t visualize how vaporizing a hot wire with sudden and massive electrical input could be used to trigger a nuclear explosive device.
The technology is called an “exploding bridgewire detonator” and can be read about (along with other techniques used in nuclear detonation, here: https://nuclear-knowledge.com/detonators.php
Next time, web search is your friend. – Anthony
UPDATE 2:
It’s the title of the original article.
And nuclear bomb detonator, does not mean nuclear detonator. ~ctm
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I don’t see what the big deal is with the required 100 MPa pressure – that works out to 14,500 psi, well within the capabilities of any common engineering material. Unless it’s a misprint and they meant GPa.
Anyway the original article says
“The deeper the shale beds, the higher the water pressure needed to frack the rock and release the gas. Reaching China’s reserves, at 3.5km (2.2 miles) underground, would require a water pressure of about 100 megapascals, or about the same as is found at the bottom of the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean, the deepest point on Earth.”
as in the link THIS thread starts with.
The Chinese article is bunk. They have the resources, but they misrepresent the US miracle with fracking. US (and Canada) plays are typically 1500m to 3000m deep (not a few hundred meters!), not much different than China’s. It takes 200m to turn a vertical hole to horizontal as you approach the desired depth. Moreover, the first 800 m to 1000m depth is under hydrostatic pressure (waterwell maximum depths), and much of the originally producible locked in gas and oil has escaped. The bunk sounds a bit like the kind of excuse that might be given to the commissariat on why their fracking failed!
Pressures down to 3000m in sedimentary rocks are about 65,000 kPa. For fracturing the shale you need to use ~80% of this pressure (you get assistance from pore pressure in the formation). You will need higher pressure if there is also tectonic pressure affecting the deposit. At these depths, good quality rounded quartz sand grains for fracture “proppants” can withstand the pressure. Deeper plays require manufactured ceramic “sand”. They are even used in developing reservoirs in the Gulf of Mexico where total depth is 10,000m! in water depths of over 2000m! From a floating drilling platform! No Chinese drilling crews need apply!
China gave up on their fracking adventure while the US was still optimizing the technology. EOG (a fragment of Enron) holds the largest land-based O&G position in the US and is a major innovator in hydraulic fracturing. Their developments in the process by 2017, has made it viable to re-enter some 50,000 ‘depleted’ fractured wells to produce as much again as they had already produced. Turn the Chinese plays over to EOG and see what happens!
Well having cut this sour grapes hit article down to size, what about their new technology? Well I’m curious about any new tech and wish then luck. I’m not hopeful though, because you not only have to crack the rock (which at their depths can also be done with high pressure water), but you have to prop the fractures open or they simply close down again! (OMG I hope they know the importance of using high test quartz sand and super strong ceramic sand!) The water serves not only to crack the rock, but to force the sand grains in to prop open the fracture. How are they accomplishing the latter task with an electric zap technology?
Yes, there are numerous errors and misleading statements in the headline article. I also share the skepticism about the ability to effectively stimulate with an explosive including the challenge to prop the fractures as discussed by Gary P., but I hope they have a safe and successful experiment.
The down hole nuclear explosions denoted to stimulate gas-bearing strata in the western USA decades ago were failures. Those experiments created glass-lined cavities and localized radioactive gas.
It’s been done already. I remember reading about it in Popular Science back in high school.
https://aoghs.org/technology/project-gasbuggy/
“December 10, 1967, a nuclear bomb exploded less than 60 miles from Farmington,” explains historian Wade Nelson in an article written three decades later, “Nuclear explosion shook Farmington.”
The 4,042-foot-deep detonation created a molten glass-lined cavern about 160 feet in diameter and 333 feet tall. It collapsed within seconds.
Subsequent measurements indicated fractures extended more than 200 feet in all directions – and significantly increased natural gas production.”
Not sure where you’re getting your “little boy detonator” bullshit but you’re dead wrong.
Little boy was two subcritical masses and a goddamned field cannon.
Re-read the article, it’s even stupid about ground pressure and crushing forces.
There are no “crushing forces” on well drill heads because they’re at ambient pressure or higher due to also being at the depth they’re drilling with the added push of the slurry system.
They aren’t trying to frac the drill head. They are trying to frac the rocks surrounding the bore hole.
For those rocks, the weight of the rocks above them do matter.
MarkW,
There are various types of pressure when you study deep drilling/mining. Some are not intuitive. For example, your simple comment is probably wrong. You can take a brick out of a high brick wall with no great harm. The wall need not fall down. The pressure distribution will adjust around the cavity you produce. You can build the wall higher and higher without crushing bricks at the base because the bricks above the base have some action like the arch over a doorway, holding them up and affecting the pressure on bricks below. Geologists in underground mines use finite element analysis, for example, to model the pressure distribution in rocks around the mine. It is quite an advanced topic and should be immune from amateur comment. Google, for example, will give search results like this:
https://www.omicsonline.org/open-access/full-threedimensional-finite-element-analysis-of-the-stress-redistribution-in-mine-structural-pillar-2168-9806-3-119.php?aid=26300 Geoff.
This is not a case of removing a brick, it’s a case of trying to move a brick upwards. In that case, unless the rock above deforms, you are going to have to push against the weight of all the rock above.
MarkW,
Are you trying to argue that your theory of things is better than widely-used, mature technology? I really have no idea of what you are trying to say, or why. Geoff.
No MarkW, it’s too not
“This is not a case of removing a brick, it’s a case of trying to move a brick upwards”
but it’s simply drilling a hole through “a wall” from crest to basement.
Nothing to do with the original article but with “simply drilling a hole. …”
Why use the false flag “nuclear” in the title, in need of clickbait perhaps?
I see I am not the first one to notice that…
I now see it is a verbatim quote from The South China Morning Post, so the posting title should have been in quotes.
Oh please…..false flag?
Read the update please…..
Yes false flag cdm, “nuclear bomb detonator” needs careful reading of the body text before it is clear that no nuclear device is used, that is not evident from the title, therefore click bait. Please put quotation marks around the title.
So They are using a steam engine to frack rocks and clay.
I wonder does the unit come up the bore hole like a bullet.
They still have to get it down there.
Would not like to be there when they try it out.
Most Volcanoes are steam driven.
twobob,
Why did you feel compelled to write this and so display your ignorance?
There is a large, important industry full of engineers and scientists who have developed the concepts you seem ignorant about. We can assume that the nation will continue to make progress without the need to pay attention to your comment. So, why did you write it? Geoff.
Using the reported 100 Mega Pascals versus lithostatic pressure gradient I get a depth of about ~4,300 meters. Now some of that is the pressure needed to actually break open the rock (presumably shale) so a depth of 3,500 meters is reasonable. Different formations of rock will require different pressures to significantly crack them open, therefore I find the 100 Mega Pascals to be within a reasonable limit, especially if the formations are very tight ones.
U.S. fracking generally is in the range of 40 to 70 Mega Pascals, but over 100 Mega Pascals has been achieved. This question for China is would the equipment needed to achieve these high pressures be economical to use in these particular production fields. So while the technology is likely available, the cost may be prohibitive.
These “new method” of fracturing the rock only works to out to 50 meters according to the report, and then repeating the process will result in an expanded area, but assuming the force of the effect is diminishing as the 1 over the square of the distance, the next firing would only expand the area by another 10 meters or so (very roughly). Using horizontal drilling one can drill 1,000 meters or more if the strata allows for it. So the new fracking process would require some 100 times more drill wells to achieve a similar result. I must be missing something here, this would not be economically feasible – but I guess could be used under war-time conditions.
Interesting, but I don’t see how this replaces fracking.
Oh, and the U.S. test use of a nuclear device was successful…as long as you don’t mind the natural gas released being radioactive! (or at least containing radioactive elements within it)
Hi Robert, typically the fracking pressure
needed is only 80% of the lithostatic pressure at the target depth. There is an “assist” from the pore pressure in the formation. On some locations there can be tectonic pressure (stress) that would need increased fracking pressure to overcome.
Also, horizontal drilling of 10,000ft (3000m) has been achieved. The bit has a hydraulic motor, turned by the outflow of drilling mud slurry so there is no twisting of the drill stem required.
Stunningly ignorant article from a technical perspective regarding hydraulic fracturing.
To say 11,500 foot vertical depth is beyond current capabilities is to ignore the multiple 13,000 foot plus Deep Utica wells, the several Tuscaloosa Marine Shale wells which were over 14,000 foot vertical depth and the 16,300 foot deep Eagles Ranch well from EOG in the Louisiana Austin Chalk.
Other details also simply incorrect in the article.
I agree – as I said above, the article is at least useless from a technical perspective, if not completely wrong…
Joe, Chevron has a 29,000ft well in the Gulf of Mexico located in ~6300ft of water and drilled from a floating platform! I’m sure the Chinese aren’t reporting on this feat of technology.
Anthony
Re your addition about clickbait. There are lots of things used in some nuclear bombs that have other uses; but one does not say “nuclear bomb nuts and bolts” because many bombs contain nuts and bolts. The fact that many nuclear bombs used a detonator of this type does not justify the “nuclear bomb” reference in the title.
That would be a fair criticism for a general part like nuts and bolts.
But in this case, there’s a unique part, designed specifically for nuclear detonation, the “explosive bridgewire detonator” used.
If there were as many common uses for “explosive bridgewire detonators” as nuts and bolts, and they were found in many other things, you’d have a point about it not being necessary to use “nuclear” in the title.
The title stays.
…fracking (if you will) in an earthquake prone zone.
Two thoughts come to mind:
1. Earthquakes release many orders of magnitude more energy than nuclear explosions… at least the big/destructive ones do.
2. Earthquake prone zones are regions where stress accumulates from tectonic or volcanic activity deep down. Sooner or later something triggers the release… quite possibly shock waves from fracking, or something else.
Sooner or later that accumulated energy will release… fracking or no fracking. Equally possible is that fracking might trigger mini releases lowering the stress level and reducing the likelyhood and severity of earthquakes.
Fracking could even lead to a mechanism for pre-empting catastrophic earhquakes…Who knows?
Cheers
Mike
I knew from context what type of detonator they meant, even if they got the bomb (Hiroshima v. Nagasaki) wrong.
“Zhang’s torpedo-shaped device uses a powerful electric current to generate concentrated, precisely controlled shock waves to achieve the same result.”
That’s not the technology used to detonate Little Boy (gun type).
It might have been used in Fat Man (implosion type) – but that bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, not Hiroshima.
If China is leading the world in moving to renewables, and renewables are cheaper and more efficient than gas, why do they need to undertake ‘extreme fracking’?
May have been said already, but the Hiroshima bomb was a gun type. This would not have had any special firing requirements, just a normal gun primer. It was desperately inefficient however, and that is why no modern weapon works that way.
The Nagasaki weapon (and all modern ones) use an implosion arrangement which requires a number of detonators to fire with precise timing. The reason for the exploding bridgewire (or foil slapper, as is now used) is to give a short and predictable firing delay, ordinary detonators having too much variance in their firing delay. It also has a safety advantage in that it can fire an insensitive primer directly, avoiding the need for sensitive primers which could cause accidental firing, for example if the weapon is dropped in handling.
Much of roaming fee for a handful of ever repated arguments.
Like Shakespeare’s play ‘much ado about nothing.’
The expression for it is something developed for nuclear weapons. Never used in any nuclear weapon.