High-Speed Data Transfer Over ... Mud

An anonymous reader writes "You might have laid Ethernet through some pretty aggressive environments, but how about through a 4-inch diameter steel pipe immersed in electrically conductive mud at pressures up to 1000 atmospheres, temperatures up to 150 deg C, and with vibrational accelerations of hundreds of g? The Department of Energy has announced the invention of a system to allow data transmission up to 1 Mbit/s along drillpipe. That might not sound too fast, but the current technology uses some pretty neat electromechanical engineering to get ... 10 bits per second (on a good day). This will revolutionize the oil industry's ability to see where its wells are going and steer them into pockets of oil."

Comments

Hunh?

[mindstrm]

"This is why 2.4Ghz wireless has become popular. 2.4Ghz was chosen for wireless networking because the frequency is the same as the resonance of trees and bricks, which means signals on that carrier wave can penetrate those objects leading to greater coverage."

Resonant materials stop the signal in it's tracks.

2.4 GHZ is almost useless at penetrating brick and trees. It requires true line of sight. 900Mhz is far better at penetrating these things than 2.4Ghz is.

Dense wood full of water (trees) or brick / concrete walls are the enemy of 2.4Ghz.

2.4Ghz was chosen because the band was there, and the higher frequency allowed greater data transmission than 900Mhz. For penetration of our everyday living space, 2.4Ghz is relatively shitty.

Re:Something like 2.4GHz would work a treat

[encrypted]

I work for an ISP that supplies connections soley via 2.4ghz, infact our entire backbone is a mixture of 2.4 and 5.8, and trust me when I say 2.4 is stubborn, it hates solid objects and water, water is evil, becuase water resinates at 2.4 aswell. Mud is semi-solid and wet, 2.4 wouldnt stand a chance.

more details

[Alien54]

The key to the new system is a unique non-contacting coupler embedded in connections between 30-foot long sections of drill pipe. The coupler permits data to be sent across the connection and on through a high-speed cable attached to the inner pipe wall.

For more than 60 years, engineers have struggled with the problem of a drill pipe connection, or "tool joint," that would stand up to the wear and tear of increasingly hostile downhole drilling conditions, yet provide reliable electrical connections every 30 feet over thousands of feet of pipe penetrating deep into some of nature's harshest environments. [...]

But the excruciatingly slow pace of mud pulse telemetry - 3 to 10 bits per second - often meant that data resolution was so poor that the driller could not make crucial decisions in real time. Often, time-consuming operations would be required to retrieve the downhole data or drilling would have to stop while other procedures were employed to confirm the low-resolution data pulsed to the surface.

And there is this link, complete with pretty graphics, from the company that actually developed the technology

http://www.grantprideco.com/gptechnologies/Intelli Pipe.asp

have fun

Re:Something like 2.4GHz would work a treat

[adolf]

Bzzt.

High-frequency RF does not penetrate earth very well.

2.4GHz signals, in particular, are very trouble-prone in this application, as water converts it to heat more efficiently than any other frequency. Drilling is a very wet operation.

Hint: this is why your microwave operates at 2.4GHz, and why the band is unlicensed. Because it is so readily absorbed by masonry, trees, and other relatively wet objects, it was deemed (at least a few years ago) relatively unsuitable for serious communications and kept from being sold commercially since the beginning of time.

Have you never driven through a tunnel with the radio on, or while using a cell phone? FM radio is down near 100MHz, well into the range of relatively slow data transfer.

You need VLF radio to get through that much solid crap, and once you do that, you're back into the slothly realm of measuring things in bits per minute.

'sides, aiming a 1-megaWatt microwave oven down a drill pipe would not make their already-existing heat problems any better...

For more information on the origin of this problem

[DaedalusLogic]

Check out Schlumberger www.slb.com. They're the 800 lb gorilla of the oilfield services industry. Their original solution to finding what was going on at the other end of a drilling rig was to simply pulse mud. Switch it on and off and measure the changes in this signal on the end of the drilling rig. When drilling a rig mud is used to stabilize the walls of the shaft . The advantage of this technique is this... No circular conductor built into the pipe means it can be adapted easily to old equipment and its cheaper. This new system described will eventually make its gains... but its gonna be a while... I saw someone mention wireless... Totally unfriendly environment and there is WAY to much noise, not to mention these holes are so deep you're not going to penetrate all the way back up the hole to the rig on the surface. Anyway... that's a really basic description of what the old new and a couple considerations are in the industry... Look up Schlumberger for a little more info... or Halliburton...

Radio interview about this

[wackybrit]

Whoa, what a coincidence. I read this story and then I heard an interview with the people actually producing this hardware on the radio. I have digital radio so I recorded it and put it on my site as a 16kbps MP3. It's only 160k. Here you go:

http://www.boog.co.uk/media/wireless-oil.mp3

Re:Something like 2.4GHz would work a treat

[freaq]

adolf said,

Drilling is a very wet operation.

say what? try _can_be_.

some drilling operations use water, but all of the rigs i've worked on switched over to invert (an oil-based drilling mud) once they got past the water table. see table 1 of this pdf (p 14 of the pdf, p 9 of the printout), which compares oil-based muds and water-based muds. with OBMs, you couldn't have more than 0.6% water.

how well does paraffin or diesel block 2.4GHz?

i admit, i've only burned shovel on rigs in western and northern alberta, and not for a few years, either. perhaps water-based drilling is more popular in other places. i sense a geology/geography lesson impending...?
the only fun part about it i remember was excavating the flare pits at the start of each hole. and telling greenhorns to get me two joints.

Re:Tacoma Narrows Bridge

[Meefan]

You DO know that MW is not mW, right?

Heh. Big difference between mega and milli.

This technology does NOT use mud. The OLD tech did

[thebigmacd]

From what I read in the article, the heading for this article is inaccurate. The new technology uses a high speed digital cable embedded in the pipe wall to send data to the surface.
To quote from the article:

The key to the new system is a unique non-contacting coupler embedded in connections between 30-foot long sections of drill pipe. The coupler permits data to be sent across the connection and on through a high-speed cable attached to the inner pipe wall.

For more than 60 years, engineers have struggled with the problem of a drill pipe connection, or "tool joint," that would stand up to the wear and tear of increasingly hostile downhole drilling conditions, yet provide reliable electrical connections every 30 feet over thousands of feet of pipe penetrating deep into some of nature's harshest environments.

Largely because of the stumbling block, in the mid 1970s developers turned to a technology called "mud pulse telemetry." Mud pulse telemetry foregoes electrical connections and transmits data as pressure pulses through fluid circulated to clean the cuttings out of the wellbore.

But the excruciatingly slow pace of mud pulse telemetry - 3 to 10 bits per second - often meant that data resolution was so poor that the driller could not make crucial decisions in real time. Often, time-consuming operations would be required to retrieve the downhole data or drilling would have to stop while other procedures were employed to confirm the low-resolution data pulsed to the surface

Thanx, thebigmacd