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Brown coal produces methane gas. This gas
can be recovered by drilling into the coal bed. To allow the gas to
escape the rock needs to be fractured and along these fractures the gas
can flow. These are created by pumping water at high flows into the coal
bed. We used 2 40' shipping containers as a reservoir for 60,000
litres of water which was pumped into the well at 53 litres per second.
The expected pressure was 1500 psi. |
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Two multistage pumps in series were used
to achieve this pressure. We fractured two wells in the same day and for
ease of relocation from well to well the whole setup was mounted
on a semi-trailer. The advantage of the trailer mounting was that the
relative positioning between the pumps remained untouched and only the
suction piping needed adjustment between wells. |
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The procedure took only twenty minutes
per well of actual pumping time after spending weeks in preparation and
testing at our works. Both pumps were fully overhauled prior to being
used on this job and the testing procedure involved using orifice plates
to achieve the required pressure. The whole of the site work took only
two days. |
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We connected the pumpsets to the well
head via 6 2" high pressure hoses which allowed for easy and quick
connect and disconnect. Large hoses at these pressure ratings are
hard to source and vastly more expensive than smaller bore hoses. |
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