Quantum Leap: 海角社区 PETE Professor Works to Detect Oil Leaks Early
July 7, 2021
BATON ROUGE, LA 鈥� Imagine if oil and gas companies were able to detect a leak before
marine life, and sometimes human life, were destroyed. 海角社区 Petroleum Engineering Assistant
Professor Jyotsna Sharma is helping make this possible through her research, funded
by a $750,000 grant from the Department of Energy, using quantum-enhanced fiber sensing
for oil and gas applications.
Sharma, who also serves as the Devon Energy Career Development Professor at 海角社区, is working alongside University of Oklahoma Physics and Astronomy Associate Professor Alberto Marino to develop a quantum-sensing approach that is compatible with current infrastructure in the oil and gas industry and can outperform the current state-of-the-art techniques.
鈥淎 major area of concern in the oil and gas industry is preventing environmental contamination caused by subsurface leaks due to well integrity issues and surface spillage through the millions of miles of surface, underground, and subsea pipelines that accrue over years,鈥� Sharma said. 鈥淭his spillage causes ecological damage, human casualties, and economic loss.鈥�
Current commercial techniques for leakage detection are limited by environmental and background noise and don鈥檛 offer enough sensitivity to detect small leaks. Such noises include pump- and fluid-handling noise and waves in offshore operations.
鈥淲e will use quantum states of light to enhance the sensitivity of fiber-optic leakage sensors,鈥� Sharma said. 鈥淲e believe that the recent developments in quantum information science can lead to a paradigm shift in the field with the potential for a large impact for oil and gas applications through improvements in monitoring technology for earlier identification and warning.鈥�
Sharma, who is co-principal investigator on the project, and Marino (principal investigator) are working with Oak Ridge National Laboratory on the three-year project. After performing initial tests at the lab, the team will then test the developed quantum techniques under real-life conditions at the 5,000-ft.-deep high-pressure test well, instrumented with fiber-optic sensors, at 海角社区鈥檚 Petroleum Engineering Research, Training, & Testing (PERTT) Lab.
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