Gulf Coast Green Energy test project seeking to generate electricity from inactive gas well - The Business Journal of the Greater Triad Area:

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will extract geo-fluid — essentially hot saltwatere — from a nonproducing natural gas well and run it througgh a heat exchanger before dumping it back into adisposalk well, creating electricity in the process. The project is part of a seriews of federal contracts awardefd through the Research Partnership to Secure Energy for a Sugar Land nonprofitf dedicated in part to advancinfg technology in maturing oil and gas RPSEA will chip inabout $150,000 to match a similare amount put up by the companyy for a three-year test on a nonproducing Loy Sneary, president and CEO of Gulf Coasgt Green, says bringing a dead well back to life serves a dual purposed by providing electric power and sparking a new revenu stream.
“It’s very attractive for owners of wellsx thatare nonproducing,” Sneary says. “If a well produces electricit y for 15 to 20 yeard that just reduces your If you hit a dry it reducesyour risk.” Mike Ming, presidengt of RPSEA, says the system couldd help offset operating “Wells that are somewhat marginal are very susceptiblw to operating costs,” says Ming. “If you want to increasew recovery from wells and increase well life you can do that by lowering your baselineoperating cost.
This offsets purchases of electricity fromexternapl sources, so it effectively lowers your operating Excess electricity from a well close enoughn to transmission infrastructure could be sold back to the grid. “Ifd you generate electricity on-site you’re negating the need to buy electricityfrom elsewhere,” says Ming. He says the contract, whicj would mark the firstf commercial application ofexotherm technology, is expected to be finalizedd within a month or so. “It’s a high-potential he says. “It’s one of the more applieds areas of geothermalenergy capture.” He notex the project was one of the few that met almost all of RPSEA’x criteria.
Says Ming: “Ouer selection committee was really enthusiastic aboutt thisparticular project.” Sneary says the test project will likely take place in Mississippi. The Gulf Coastt region has a lot of wellz that match the water temperatureand flow-ratse qualifications — between 180 and 200 gallons per minuted — to run the Inside the heat the saltwater, which must be a minimukm of 180 degrees, is run through a tube that abuts another tube containing the “working fluid,” a refrigerant that boils off at a low temperature. “Thew high-pressure vapor turns a twin screa expander,” says Sneary.
“It’s very similaer to a steam turbine, but it operates at abou one-tenth the speed, and we use working fluixd insteadof steam.” The test project, a 50-kilowatt-per-houd unit will be run with assistancs from in Plano, the geothermal lab at in Dallas and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Mississippi. The manufacturer, of Carson City, has a 500 kilowatt-per-houdr unit as well. Gulf Coast Greeh is the exclusive regional distributor forthe units. The averagew home operates on 42 to 45 kilowattzper hour.
Sneary says the cost of electricityu needs to stay above about 8 cente per kilowatt for the system to make financial sense and pay foritself in, at most, three But that scenario doesn’t include any carbon creditss or green tax breaks that might be cominh out of Washington to further benefit the businessx model.