Environmental Monitoring using off-shore wind and tidal power optical fibres

国际能源署表示，如果没有碳捕获、使用和储存(CCUS)，我们到2050年就无法实现净零目标。必须对地下地质存储水库进行监测，以便监管机构能够确保存储的安全，运营商可以对水库进行工程设计，以避免二氧化碳泄漏。因此，有必要开发准确、经济的地下监测技术。与此同时，根据苏格兰可再生能源公司的数据，潮汐能发电量，尤其是风能发电量在过去十年里翻了两番，预计到2030年，风能发电量将再翻一番。然而，建议用于风电场开发的三个主要近海区域占据了与CCUS相关的区域(NSTA，2022)。地震地下二氧化碳监测船不能在靠近风力发电场基础设施的地方工作，涡轮机噪声引起了人们对地震数据的信噪比和可重复性要求的担忧。NOC的新技术首次允许声波和地震波的信号沿着捆绑在电力电缆上的光纤每米每毫秒被记录下来。它们穿过海床，从陆地到潮汐和风力发电场，甚至高达水面上的单个涡轮机。沿每根光纤长度探测波的能力创建了一个新的、密集分布的大数据传感器网络，以监测近海的固体地球、海洋声学和大气声音。这种相对未被开发的能力允许实时记录风力发电场的噪音，以便从地震数据中删除它，以改进地下监测。涡轮机噪声本身可能是监测地下的地震源，使用记录的噪声的地震梯度测量、干涉测量和神经网络层析(曹等人，2020；Zhang等人，2020；Zhang等人，2022)。该项目将研究这些方法并开发其他方法，以改进对地下二氧化碳的监测，监测海洋生物和人类活动的海洋声信号，并分析海面上空和电力电缆着陆站周围陆地上的声学，以探测人类和其他活动。研究问题该项目旨在将部署在风力发电场的光纤记录的信号用于环境监测。这可以包括监测海底、海洋生物、海洋动力学或人类活动，并将随着项目的进展而发展。方法您将从探索部署在海床和涡轮机上的光纤上记录的风力涡轮机噪声信号开始。然后，您将探索使用此噪波作为地震源来监视地下。你还将探索光纤记录的其他信号，其中可能包括来自海洋生物、人类活动、洋流和微震的信号。有多种工具可以帮助进行这种分析。

The International Energy Agency states that we cannot achieve net zero ambitions by 2050 without Carbon Capture, Use & Storage (CCUS). Subsurface geological storage reservoirs must be monitored so that regulators can ensure security of the store, and operators can engineer reservoirs to avoid CO2 leakage. So there is a need to develop accurate and economical subsurface monitoring techniques. In parallel, tidal and particularly wind energy generation quadrupled in the past decade, with the expected capacity for wind energy to double again by 2030, according to Scottish Renewables. Yet three major off-shore areas proposed for wind farm development occupy areas related to CCUS (NSTA, 2022). Seismic subsurface CO2 monitoring vessels cannot operate close to wind farm infrastructure, and turbine noise raises concerns over signal to noise and repeatability requirements for seismic data. Novel technology from NOC has for the first time allowed signals from acoustic and seismic waves to be recorded every metre and every millisecond along optical fibres bound to power cables. They cross the seabed from land to tidal and wind farms, even up to individual turbines above the water surface. The ability to detect waves along the length of each fibre creates a new, densely distributed network of big-data sensors to monitor the solid Earth, ocean acoustics, and atmospheric sound off-shore. This relatively unexplored capability allows wind-farm noise to be recorded in real time so that it can be removed from seismic data to improve subsurface monitoring. The turbine noise itself is potentially a seismic source to monitor the subsurface, using seismic gradiometry, interferometry and neural network tomography of the recorded noise (Cao et al., 2020; Zhang et al., 2020; Zhang et al., 2022). This project will investigate these methods and develop others to improve subsurface CO2 monitoring, to monitor ocean acoustic signals from marine life and human activity, and to analyse acoustics in air above the sea and on land around power cable landing stations to detect human and other activity. Research questionsThe project aims to use signals recorded by optical fibres deployed at wind farms for environmental monitoring. This can include monitoring of the subsurface, marine life, ocean dynamics or human activity, and will develop as the project progresses. MethodologyYou will begin by exploring the signals of wind turbine noise recorded on optical fibres deployed on the seabed and on the turbines themselves. You will then explore using this noise as a seismic source to monitor the subsurface. You will also explore other signals recorded by the optical fibres, which could include signals from marine life, human activity, ocean currents and microseismicity. A variety of tools are available to assist in this analysis.