Weather Guard Lightning Tech

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.

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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-