Everpoint’s BladeBlok Recycles Blades for Drilling

James Timmins, VP of Engineering at Everpoint Services, joins to discuss how recycled wind turbine blades become BladeBlok, a drilling fluid additive for oil, gas, and geothermal wells. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly newsletter on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on YouTube, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary's "Engineering with Rosie" YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining light on wind energy's brightest innovators. This is the progress powering tomorrow Allen Hall: James, welcome to the podcast. Thank you. There has been a lot of activity at EverPoint Services. So I wanna back up first because if you're not familiar with EverPoint Services, they are a recycler f- for renewable projects.  James Timmins: So we're a, a renewable energy service company that specializes in, um, decommissioning and remediation services for, uh, wind and solar assets. Allen Hall: So when a solar farm gets hit by hail and the panels are broken, EverPoint comes up and cleans up that mess to, to allow the repair to happen.  James Timmins: Correct, yes.  Allen Hall: And on the wind turbine side, you're t- decommissioning wind turbines, but you're also taking the [00:01:00] blades.  James Timmins: Yes. So it's our responsibility to haul off the damaged, I guess, the scrap. And, um, obviously there's a very healthy market for scrap steel that you find in the tower base- Yes ... but the fiberglass is a little less straightforward when it comes to disposal and/or recycling.  Allen Hall: So typically with the fiberglass blades or any composite that's, that's being recycled, th- there's really two techniques that are being implemented right now. Uh, well, really three. Let's go over three of 'em. One of 'em is you can just bury them. They're c- essentially construction materials, so you can bury them. Not ideal, but it has happened in the past. The second is they grind up the, the blades and use 'em in, uh, c- the cement-making process, where they're burning some of the things that are combustible there and using it for fuel, but also the fiber can help with the cement. Does, does that sound right? Correct. And, and then the third one I've seen is just as a reinforcement product. [00:02:00] So it's, uh, they chop up the fiber in different lengths, they clean it up, and you can u- use it as an additive to different products. Yes. And, and that generally has been the marketplace in the blade recycling area for- Going on 20 years now probably Yes Until now. And that's where Everpoint has really changed the game because you're thinking about blade recycling a completely different way.  James Timmins: Correct. So my background is oil and gas. I was a drilling engineer, uh, for major oil companies, so it was my job to plan, execute, and oversee drilling operations. So I worked kind of all over the world, and this project started as an icebreaker at a friend's birthday. I had never met Tyler Goodell before. I- Wait,  Allen Hall: wait, wait. So you're at a birthday party-  James Timmins: Yes ...  Allen Hall: and your kids are having fun. They're eating cake. Oh,  James Timmins: we were at a dive bar, so we- Oh, okay ... yeah, watching a band, uh- ... sitting over a bucket of Lone Stars and yeah.  Allen Hall: Okay. That's the [00:03:00] best place for new ideas to occur clearly. So you're, you're, you're at a birthday event, you're hanging out, and what happens?  James Timmins: He asked me what, what I would do with tens of thousands of tons of scrap fiberglass.  Allen Hall: And you get asked that every day, or is it- No. Okay.  James Timmins: And I thought it was a weird question, and I kinda put it in the back of my mind. And about 15 minutes later I was like, "Well, I have an idea that we could, uh- Put at least some of that to work. Allen Hall: And what was that idea?  James Timmins: The idea was that we could grind it to a specific particle size distribution and use it as a fluid loss additive in oil, gas, and geothermal drilling operations.  Allen Hall: Okay. That's a unique application.  James Timmins: Yes.  Allen Hall: So I think we need to walk into what happens when we're drilling an oil well or any sort of well, I suppose. Uh, there's unique things that happen that require specialty fluids or specially ...  James Timmins: Uh, specialty additives you could say. Additives.  Allen Hall: Yes. [00:04:00] So- Okay. That's a, that's a good way to describe it. All right. So, uh, I'm drilling a well. I'm in Texas. I'm an oil tycoon. I wanna drill this well. What am I doing?  James Timmins: So you have what's called drilling mud, which is pumped down the drill string through the bit. Um, helps cool the bit, um, power down hole tools, and sweep the cuttings out, which is the- Okay ... drilled up rock.  Allen Hall: Yep.  James Timmins: So there's a, a hydrostatic pressure that the fluid column exerts on the formation. And if that fluid column exerts more pressure than the formation can stand, it splits open like a fracture. Allen Hall: Okay.  James Timmins: In this case, an accidental fracture. Or you could have just a porous formation of, uh, low pressure. And so you have this pressure imbalance from the wellbore where the fluid wants to flow to the area of low pressure. And, uh, this mud is $300 or $400 a barrel. And if you're- Whoa ... losing 100 barrels an hour, the costs add up really quick. Can't drill ahead. Um, it's what's called non-productive time. [00:05:00] So you're spending 80 or $100,000 a day for all this equipment to be out there, and you're not drilling ahead, so.  Allen Hall: Okay. So as the, the drill bit goes down into the formation, you're hitting rock. You hit a crack in a rock, or you create a crack in a rock. All your drilling mud, and it's not really mud, right? No, it's- It's, it's a special compound-  James Timmins: Yes ... that we call mud. Very,  Allen Hall: uh,  James Timmins: yeah, it's drilling fluid, I guess, is the technical term. Okay . But, um- I've  Allen Hall: heard mud used universally.  James Timmins: It kinda looks like chocolate milk most of the time.  Allen Hall: There you go. Yeah. Okay. So it's an expensive fluid. You're pushing it down in, but then you get a, a crack or a formation that you run into, and all that precious fluid goes running off somewhere else. Yep. So which it doesn't allow you to cool the bit, which basically stops all drilling.  James Timmins: Correct.  Allen Hall: Okay, that's a big problem.  James Timmins: And in worst case scenario, the fluid column falls and the pressure on the formation falls, and then the well starts flowing and you have a well control problem, so. Allen Hall: So now you got a big problem.  James Timmins: Yep. [00:06:00] Allen Hall: All right. So now you have fluid coming back at you that you're not ready for.  James Timmins: Correct, yeah.  Allen Hall: Okay, that seems like quite the mess.  James Timmins: Yeah, so it's actually one of the... You know, in some parts of the world, one of the top drivers of non-productive time and cost. So it's a, kind of a problem as old as the oil field itself, but... Allen Hall: Okay, c- 'cause at the end of the day, you would like to have a specific hole tapped at a specific location pulling-  James Timmins: Yes ...  Allen Hall: hopefully petroleum products from that area or whatever you're going for. It's could, could be gas- Yeah ... uh, off of that site, but you have to have some constraints about it, right? Right. You d- d- to control everything. Okay. So n- that sets the problem. All right. We're gonna run to this, uh, area where we've, we've cracked the found- the, the rock or there's porous rock and we're pumping this, a really expensive fluid down it and we would like to stop that from happening. How does that end up involving wind turbine blade recycling? James Timmins: So we grind this material to a specific size and you mix it at a certain [00:07:00] concentration. Could be two pounds per barrel of mud or 80, uh, depending on the severity of the losses. But, um, this mixture is pumped down into the formation and this, um, kind of acts like a... Technical term is bridging. So this, these fibers from the recycled turbine blades cannot fit through all of the pore spaces. Sure. And gradually they be- begin to accumulate on the wall of the, the wellbore. So they- Okay ... uh, eventually it's kinda like a clogged sink with... You know, you get enough- So you get enough hair in the sink ... chopped vegetables. Yeah. Yeah. It, it eventually will stop flowing.  Allen Hall: Oh, well, who hasn't experienced that? So it's, it's... So you, you wanna put things down into this hole that prevent the fluid from running off. Recycled blades seems like a very viable option just because it's in an inert substance, it's pretty durable.  James Timmins: It is.  Allen Hall: It's tough. It can handle high temperatures [00:08:00] and it now can be pumped.  James Timmins: Yes.  Allen Hall: Wow. All right. So that's a, that's a remarkable idea. But ideas and products, there's usually a long distance between those two.  James Timmins: Correct, yes.  Allen Hall: So from initial concept to where you are today, walk through what you had to go do to make this into a real product.  James Timmins: Uh, so we... I basically have- was familiar with these types of products in the past, but at the level I was at, I was not getting into the granular detail-  Allen Hall: Sure James Timmins: of the qualification of the product, of the spec of the product. So, um,...