| Title | Effect of Elevated Temperatures on Fiber Glass Composite Pipes Used for Geothermal Well Completions |
|---|---|
| Authors | Andrei OLTEANU, Mihail MINESCU, Alin DINITA, Catalin TEODORIU |
| Year | 2020 |
| Conference | Stanford Geothermal Workshop |
| Keywords | well completion, composite pipes, thermal cycles |
| Abstract | Geothermal well fluids may pose high corrosive loads on the casing and tubing used to complete the well. Recent developments in composite pipe manufacturing process, that allows the reduction of fabrication costs have pushed the composite pipes to enter on the market of well completion. Although high temperature may not be favorable to the implementation of composite pipes in high enthalpy geothermal wells applications, low enthalpy geothermal wells, especially those where the fluid temperature is lower than 150°C have considered the use of fiber glass reinforced composite pipes. This paper shows the experiments performed on several on fiber glass composite pipe to understand its response to thermal cycles and we found that thermal cycling may reduce the pipe strength with about 10%. The tests have been carried out for a time frame of 3 weeks, and some samples have been continuously heated, while others have been heated for 8 hours and left to cool for 16 hours. The samples mechanical properties, have been measured using a modified pipe crushing test, which allow the use of short samples. All together we believe that our experiments, will help better understand the use of composite pipes in geothermal well completions. |