Beyond 300°C: Reliable Long-Term Measurement of Temperature for Supercritical Geothermal Systems

Fiber optic technology has been used extensively in the oil and gas industry to provide important communications and sensing functions for reservoir management. Distributed temperature sensing (DTS) systems, which use optical fibers to measure temperature along the entire length of the installed fiber, have been used for complete well profiling at temperatures up to 300°C. To expand into the monitoring of supercritical geothermal systems beyond 300°C, new optical fibers and cable structures are required to allow these distributed temperature systems to perform.

A low attenuation metal-coated optical fiber and cable capable of withstanding temperatures up to 500°C will be demonstrated in this work. Performance will be validated by using a DTS instrument to measure temperature readings.