Silixa manufactures the world’s highest performance distributed fibre optic sensors for temperature and acoustic monitoring. Ultima™ DTS offers the best spatial resolution available on the market for continuous temperature measurements along the FO cable. iDAS™ enables the user to listen in to digital-quality sound at every point along the cable. Both systems have been used successfully in the oil & gas, industrial and environmental sector.

A hybrid cable with more sensitive acoustic detection thresholds than currently commercially available and temperature change detection capability is being developed by Silixa and will be tested at the Sulcis fault laboratory and compared with other commercially available tools (which will be installed at the site through the national programme). This cable detects the arrival of CO2 based on the differing physical properties of the CO2 plume compared with the native groundwater. It utilises advanced silica engineering to optimise the interaction between the acoustic signal with the backscattered light. Through careful tuning of the iCable optoacoustic characteristics, Silixa can achieve a 15dB to 30dB improvement in the acoustic Signal to Noise Ratio compared to the use of standard cable. This breakthrough performance allows the iDAS to detect passive signals orders of magnitude lower than previously possible, or in the case of active seismic mode, to enable the operator to use significantly fewer repeat seismic shots or lower source effort. The seismic survey will provide a better characterization of the faults and leakages into borehole. Moreover Distributed Temperature Sensor measurements during the injection phase will contribute to the leak detection and characterization. TRL of this application will be brought to 7 through testing in wells in the freshwater zone