Technology:

Seismic Monitoring a Critical Step in EGS Development (Geothermal Technologies Office)

The ability to accurately locate and characterize the release of seismic energy, generated from micro earthquakes (MEQ) is of paramount importance to the development and monitoring of EGS. MagiQ Technologies Inc., a small, innovative business, has developed a seismic sensor that does just that, all while operating at temperatures up to 300°C.

In FY 2013, MagiQ successfully completed a Small Business Innovative Research Phase II award. This project culminated in the third-party testing and evaluation of their optical-based seismic sensor at Sandia National Laboratory’s (SNL) Ground-Based Monitoring Research and Evaluation Center.

MagiQ’s sensor offers a number of important technical advantages: the sensor package does not contain electronic components that are failure-prone at high temperatures, and it can be scaled to hundreds of sensors deployed on a single optical fiber. Preliminary results show sub-Hz to multi-kHz frequency response, with sensitivity less than 10 ng/Hz1/2 (up to 1 kHz), sampling rates up to 10 MHz, with a dynamic range of 80 decibels.

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