Nanobubbles for the Energy Industry

Hello, welcome to our sixth episode. Once again, I'm your host, Niall English, co-founder and CTO of AquaB, and also a professor in chemical engineering at UCD in Ireland. So today, we're going to discuss nanobubbles in the energy industry.

And of course, there's plenty to discuss, and this is of personal interest to me. Really, the energy industry is essential. Realistically, if you ask me, in the next 10 years, are we going to turn to fully renewable energies?

No, I don't think that's possible, although it would be truly wonderful if that were to happen. But let's be realistic here. I think we need to talk about a transition in terms of energy usage, and the prevalence of energy in terms of the next 30 or 40 years into the mid-century.

And I'm hoping by that stage, we will have sufficiently decarbonized, such that we can use renewables in all of their intermittency. And of course, that involves us making huge progress in the energy storage area, for example, using hydrogen storage as well, and the possibility of innovations in graphene-based energy storage as well. But I see hydrogen storage as a key priority in the coming decades.

However, clearly between now and mid-century, we see that the petroleum industry, the oil industry, gas industry, is going to be very important and will only fade out slowly and over time. So really, one of the most important environmental contributions and sustainability contributions that we can make now in the first half of our century is to make oil and gas more environmentally sustainable. And I think that Nanobubbles, from what I've seen and the work that I've been doing, and I think that others are doing, I really think that Nanobubbles can contribute a very great deal to this, to really reduce the carbon and energy footprint and environmental footprint of the energy industry.

So first of all, what do I mean by the energy industry? Well, in essence, oil and gas, although we can talk about other areas such as, you know, maize to produce ethanol and biofuels as well, which is important and a growing area. In terms of upstream oil and gas, there's enhanced oil recovery, enhanced hydrocarbon recovery, fracking.

That's very important. And then in the downstream part of oil and gas, the actual use of the fuels themselves, petrol, diesel, biofuels, perhaps other calorific fuels that may be coming on the scene in the years ahead. Of course, there's very many policy drivers for this because, you know, the transport industry and general use of engines has really led to very large levels of CO2 and other gases, carbon monoxide, NOx and SOx, being produced.

So clearly, there's huge policy drivers towards decarbonisation of the transport industry. It's going to be more difficult for aviation, although we should still certainly be trying there in terms of energy density. And really, we're trying to transition towards decarbonised forms of energy.

I'm particularly personally a fan of the hydrogen economy, once we are able to do better on energy storage and hydrogen storage. Anyway, there are plenty of policy drivers in terms of environmental emissions that are very important for the energy industry. If we focus more on upstream production of oil and gas, for example, through fracking and so forth, we can see that there's many contributions that can be made.

For example, if we're able to put nanobubbles into the frac fluids or frac juice, as it's known colloquially, we can improve the level of oil recovery and we can also do well stimulation. So if nanobubbles are in the frac juice that's pumped and the high pressure pumped down into the well, then there's two main drivers. One is thermodynamic whilst the other is kinetic, I suppose.

In the kinetic case, we can reduce the surface tension of the water carrying the nanobubbles alongside any surfactants, acids and so forth. And this can then penetrate the rock sediment matrix much more easily into the pore structure to try to dislodge any intercalated oil or gas or hydrocarbon therein. Secondly, there's a thermodynamic aspect that can effectively shift the thermodynamic phase diagram goalposts by having extra dissolved gas in the form of nanobubbles like CO2.

So with these reservoirs that are nanobubbles inside the frac fluid, those storage, if you like, or those batteries of gas, if you want to think of them in that way, release their treasure of gas to the regularly dissolved phase, as I explained in previous podcast episodes. And those then are available to be used up in the dislodging of the hydrocarbon inside the sediment. So if we can increase the speed of well stimulation, use perhaps less nutrients in the fractures, for example, less surfactants, perhaps less the multiplying agent, because they cling on to the nanobubbles for dear life, then of course that is a very attractive prospect.

Now, another clearly attractive prospect, in fact, Holy Grail one might call it, would be can we get more damn oil or gas out of the ground in terms of a higher yield per se? And that's something that I am very excited about. And there's some evidence that this can indeed be the case, if done under the correct and appropriate conditions.

Being able to do so in a cost-effective and reproducible way, in a consistent way, is of course very important. And that's really in the art of nanobubble engineering, whereas that meets the important area of upstream gas production. Other areas where nanobubbles can be of use, for example, is the production of fuels and biofuels themselves.

For example, we may be able to use algae or other sources to effectively breed and grow fuels biologically using nanobubbles. So that's another area in the oil and gas sector of interest. And of course, in terms of land-based agriculture, to grow more efficaciously the raw materials, the raw plant materials that we need to say define and derive biofuels.

For example, ethanol-based biofuels. When it comes to the combustion of fuels themselves, though, in other words, now we're in the downstream industry, we're talking about engines, then nanobubble generators can be put at the inlet manifold to an engine, or else they can be used to circulate once, twice, or however many times into fuel tanks, depending on the residence time of a fuel tank, whether that's at an airport or an underground filling, underground tanks at a filling station or at a refinery or at an oil depot, et cetera, et cetera. So as I say, nanobubble generation can be done at the fuel tank level for many, many vehicles at a central fuel supply depot or station, whether that's for sea, land, or air, or it can be done on an engine itself.

And, for example, being able to do so in ship engines is a particularly interesting area of initial work that we think should be focused on, and AquaB is working on that as well. Not that I'm here particularly to talk about in great detail about what AquaB specifically is up to. I'm more interested in exploring these topics for the wider community.

So there are a very broad range of applications of nanobubbles, both upstream and downstream, in the energy industry. However broadly or narrowly we define the energy industry, really, I suppose, in terms of AquaB's focus, the energy industry is a very key priority. So I wanted to thank you for your interest and engagement today in listening to some of my thoughts on nanobubbles and the energy industry.

In brief, we've recapped upon some of the key kinetic and thermodynamic drivers on how nanobubbles can be used to eke out more oil in an upstream way, or gas indeed, and how that can enhance the combustion efficiency and reduce the emissions profile of engines, whether on sea, air, or land. So that's an important area and contribution. In this next episode, we're going to be examining what the future might hold for nanobubbles.

And that's certainly interesting. I have some thoughts which I'd like to share with you. Thank you very much for listening.