Across the United States, millions of abandoned oil and gas wells remain after production has ceased. Image: Midjourney
The transition to cleaner energy is reshaping the way energy is produced and consumed. It is also redefining how engineers manage the infrastructure left behind. Across the United States, millions of abandoned oil and gas wells remain after production has ceased. As they age, some begin releasing methane through deteriorating well barriers, and those emissions can’t always be traced by conventional inspection methods.
At USC Viterbi‘s Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering & Materials Science, PhD student Nima Daneshvarnejad is developing an alternative approach to methane monitoring. Guided by Iraj Ershaghi, Omar B. Milligan Chair in Petroleum Engineering and founder of the USC Ershaghi Center for Energy Transition (ECET), Daneshvarnejad has designed an Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled system that continuously measures methane emissions from abandoned wells, making accurate and long-term monitoring possible at a fraction of the cost of existing methods. The paper is published in the MDPI journal, Environments.
“When I came to California, I realized the energy engineering challenges were very different from what I’d seen elsewhere,” Daneshvarnejad said. “I wanted to use my background in petroleum engineering and fluid mechanics to solve a problem that was both scientifically interesting and immediately practical.”
