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Alaska geothermal test going to Florida Chena Power would use produced water to generate electricity in oil fields, similar process used on turbine outside Fairbanks Eric Lidji Petroleum News
A geothermal project originally planned for Alaska’s North Slope is heading to Florida.
The demonstration project will use heat from near-boiling water brought to the surface during regular oil production to power a generator and make electricity.
If ultimately proven feasible, the project could have implications across the oil patch by providing a cheap, available and sustainable source of power currently going to waste.
Chena Power, the innovative energy arm of the Chena Hot Springs Resort outside Fairbanks, is partnering on the project with the United Technologies Research Center and Quantum Resources Management. The $1.45 million project is being funded by the companies with a matching grant from the U.S. Department of Energy.
Originally planned for Alaska Chena Power announced the project last year as a way to power oil production in Alaska, but couldn’t get any North Slope producers to sign on to the project.
So instead, Chena Power will set up the project at the Jay oil field, a 13-square mile field in northwestern Florida and southern Alabama.
The field was discovered in 1970 and operated by ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips until April 2007, when the companies sold the field to Quantum Resources. The field currently produces around 4,500 barrels of oil, 5 million to 7 million cubic feet of natural gas and around 120,000 barrels of extremely hot water, around 200 degrees, every day.
The demonstration project will use a binary process similar to the one powering the “Chena Chiller,” the generator facility the company created to power its sub-Arctic resort.
Instead of heating the water to steam and using that to power a turbine, this binary process uses hot water to evaporate a second liquid with a lower boiling point than water. This second liquid, now a vapor, will in turn power a turbine used to generate electricity.
Chena Power hopes to generate around 200 kilowatts of electricity from the small demonstration project in Florida, but the company believes a full project taking advantage of all the hot water produced at the oil field could generate around 1 megawatt of power, or about 5 percent of the total electrical demand at the field.
Brought back to Alaska, the technology could dramatically offset the cost of making electricity from diesel fuel and natural gas.
Prudhoe Bay alone generates 1.2 million barrels of water every day, Bernie Karl, owner of the Chena Hot Springs Report, told Petroleum News in October 2007.
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