Thermochem products

Alternatively, well flow testing is carried out using Tracer Flow Testing (TFT®) with fluids discharged into a low-cost atmospheric muffler or while on-line to a power plant. Several options for discharging wells are possible using a TFT® system, through a Blooie-line and drilling muffler, to an atmospheric muffler or rock pit, or to a power plant. Thermochem also provides low-cost atmospheric mufflers for well testing purposes.

Scaling and corrosion is a common and costly problem for geothermal operations. Scale can accumulate in wellbores, gathering systems, in the plant and reinjection pipelines, derating generation and causing regular plant shut-downs. Corrosive fluids damage equipment and present significant safety issues, from well blowouts, burst pipelines to turbine failures. With the correct process design and chemical treatment, corrosion and scale problems can be effectively mitigated. Often this can be done with inexpensive commodity chemicals rather than high-priced proprietary inhibitors.

Process and turbine inlet steam contains impurities, such as silica, sodium, chloride, iron and solid particulates, which can cause corrosion, scaling and erosion of power plant equipment, especially steam turbines. Impurities such as sodium, chloride and silica may be present as dissolved species in liquid water, or as particulate material, such as solid NaCL Volatile silica and chloride may exist in high-temperature or superheated steam, but dissolves rapidly in liquid water. In order to determine the amount of these impurities in steam, isokinetic sampling is required.  The isokinetic steam sampling system incorporates a probe with isokinetic nozzles to obtain representative steam samples across the pipeline diameter. Isokinetic sampling minimizes errors due to non-representative collection of particles and droplets relative to the bulk vapor phase.

Geothermal wells are typically sampled for geochemistry at the wellhead, which only provides an average composition of the fluids from depth. Unless the well is pumped, sampling occurs after flashing and scale deposition. Downhole sampling allows vertical profiling of geochemistry with depth, so that each entry can be defined for reservoir model development and simulations. It can also identify specific problematic fluid zones such as high gas, acidic brine or incompatible fluids that cause scaling upon mixing in the wellbore. Pre-flash fluids can be collected before calcium and trace metals have deposited for an accurate reconstruction of the original reservoir fluids.