Travel letter from the world's warmest geothermal well. Part 2.

A while back we wrote a letter from the worlds hottest geothermal well. Back then we were close to measuring supercritical conditions (temperature above 374 °C and pressure above 220 bar) with our logging tool.

Geothermal well in Italy. Here they measure temperatures 3000 meter below ground level. Photo: SINTEF

Read more about the Project in this article: Going for a geothermal world record

Another attempt

On the 28th of November we went back to the well for another attempt. This time it went very well, and on Friday, 1^st of December, the PT (pressure and temperature) logging instrument SINTEF has designed in the H2020 project DESCRAMBLE measured a temperature of 443.6 °C in the well.

This is a new world record for electronic logging tools for geothermal wells.

SINTEF researcher Morten Røed is very happy with the world record. Here i is keeping his fingers crossed before lowering the logging tool into the well. Photo: SINTEF — SINTEF researcher Morten Røed is very happy with the world record. Here he is keeping his fingers crossed before lowering the logging tool into the well. Photo: SINTEF

The well is drilled by ENEL Green Power in the DESCRAMBLE project. The depth this temperature was measured at was 2810 m and the well has a total depth of 2900 m.

The project has now reached the goal of demonstrating drilling of a supercritical well and will end in December. In March 2018 the project will have a final conference in Pisa

Follow #SINTEFblogg – we will report from Pisa when we are there 🙂

Magnus Hjelstuen and Morten Røed
SINTEF Digital – Smart Sensor Systems