A self-healing cement developed by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory can outperform conventional concrete, offering a potentially pollution-preventing technology for the growing geothermal industry.
This game-changing combination uses a flexible ingredient, a polymer, to repair fractured surfaces and fill cracks, minimizing mechanical failure risks and offering a sustainable energy source.
There are large geothermal energy reserves across the country and around the world that are not in use because wellbore cement fails in high-temperature conditions and in chemically corrosive environments. Geothermal energy is thermal energy that the Earth generates and stores. With improvements like self-healing cement, geothermal energy has the potential to be an applicable, sustainable energy source. The self-healing cement can deliver significant energy with minimal carbon release to the atmosphere.
Insights into the physical and chemical properties of a cement-polymer composite developed for geothermal wellbore applications. Kenton A.Rod, et al.
Cement and Concrete Composites. Volume 97, March 2019, Pages 279-287. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cemconcomp.2018.12.022
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