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HIGH-TEMPERATURE CASING CONDITIONING TOOL

Mechanical Design of a HTCC tool that measures well casings. 

The Task:

Mechanical design of a HTCC tool that can measure casings of circumference of 18” to 24” using 60 independent fingers, this is a world first.


Geothermal asset management is a critical part of the global energy industry. Maintaining a detailed understanding of the geothermal well casing [the internal lining of the well] year on year is key to continued green energy production. MB Century create a 3D map of the casing to monitor corrosion and casing damage. This information provides well owners advanced notice of the predicted operational life of the well casing before maintenance is required.

MB Century has been developing highly specialist techniques for measuring the high pressures and temperatures found in geothermal wells for more than 50 years. They have also developed equipment for the evaluation of both internal and external corrosion of well casings. This is a key part of their offering. The latest suite of drilling measurement tools are so ahead of the curve they’ve been bought by most major players in the sector.

The HTCC tool has to operate in a very harsh environment down some the worlds deepest and hottest geothermal wells. The tool has an operating depth of 5000M at temperatures up to 320° C and pressures up to 300 bar.

The tool is able to operate in these conditions for ten hours allowing enough time to lower the tool to the bottom of the well, deploy the measuring fingers and then winch the tool back to the surface taking measurements of the casing every 10mm. The HTCC tool can measures the internal casings of circumference of 18” to 24” every 10° using 60 independent fingers, this is a world first. The tip of each finger measures a point in space creating a point cloud to show the shape of the casing, not just the measured diameter.

These challenging design problems require serious design thinking.

In an unprecedented move, MB Century rejected the traditional engineering process in favour of a more creative design process to work around and solve these design problems. The design required specialised mechanical, electronic, electric motor and software designs to work in unison. Our multi disciplinary design team was able to swiftly conceptualize, prototype and field test our solutions to these design problems solving them one by one.

The result has created an extraordinary business opportunity for MB Century to bid for asset management work around the world.

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