Periodic Reporting for period 2 - ShaleSafe (Development of a monitoring system for inspection of soil and aquifer contamination by shalegas and fracking chemicals)
Okres sprawozdawczy: 2017-10-01 do 2019-06-30
The oil and gas industry must demonstrate, and guarantee, safe exploration and exploitation by meeting monitoring requirements set by environmental regulators. There is, therefore, a clear industry wide need to develop and implement a new in-situ technology that can continuously, reliably and cost effectively monitor the underground water and soil quality for contamination specific to shale oil and gas sub-surface activities.
The ShaleSafe proposal aims to tackle the aforementioned issue by developing an instrumentation system, which allows multiple sensor probes to be deployed in hydrological monitoring wells around the wellsite to provide automated continuous in-situ monitoring of a broad range of targeted contaminants.
The highlights of what has been achieved so far are:
• Finalisation of the pre-commercial system and testing of its individual parts in the laboratory
• Completion and qualification of ShaleSafe system. ShaleSafe system was certified against relevant CE standards
• Automated ShaleSafe deployment procedure. The final version of the system was tested in relevant environmental conditions like the ones expected in a typical field site. This was performed in an autoclave where temperature and pressure were simulated based on the end users needs.
• Production of quality dissemination materials, profiling the project and marketing the project. ShaleSafe had a strong presence in relevant conferences and workshops, leaflet dedicated to its dissemination was prepared along with a video that offers a pictorial illustration of the ShaleSafe working principle
• Development of a full commercialisation roadmap for ShaleSafe. This roadmap is part of the Marketing Plan deliverable (D6.2) and Business model (D6.5) that describe the different stakeholders and how ShaleSafe can be taken to the market with the best possible results.
• Completion and analysis of the market research. A dedicated market research was performed and this can be found in detail within D6.2.
The main impacts from the development of ShaleSafe system are the following:
1. Cost effective and long term monitoring of groundwater quality, which is essential for shale gas exploration
2. Separation of water from the gas sample and protection of the sensors/electronics from water ingress during the sampling sequence
3. Unmanned collection of data and frequent status updates from multiple monitoring points
4. Offer of a competitive solution to key stakeholders