Eight Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) technologies won R&D 100 Awards last week at R&D Magazine’s annual ceremony in Orlando, Florida. These “Oscars of Invention” honor the latest and best innovations of the past year.
LANL is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory based in New Mexico. Two of the awards are for geothermal energy applications:
LANL is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory based in New Mexico. Two of the awards are for geothermal energy applications:
Discrete Fracture Network Modeling Suite (dfnWorks) is a computational suite that simulates and predicts the flow and transport of fluids through underground fractured rock. It covers length scales that range from millimeters to kilometers, can run on computers as small as a laptop and as large as a supercomputer and requires minimal effort to create representative models. Applications for dfnWorks include helping catch rogue nations performing underground nuclear tests and maximizing the extraction of natural gas, oil and geothermal wells while minimizing environmental impacts.
High-Temperature Electric Submersible Pump Motor (HT-ESP) is rugged and reliable, offering improved thermal performance compared to conventional submersible pumps used in deep underground and extremely hot environments. Whether electric submersible pump motors are used in drilling deeper for oil and gas reservoirs or tapping into geothermal resources of energy, they must operate in harsh, extremely hot environments. Current pump motors overheat and must be replaced often. To solve this, the Los Alamos and the Chevron Energy Technology Company research team developed two technologies for HT-ESP to lower the internal operating temperature of the motor.