Prospects of Using Bionic Technologies in Oil/Gas Development

Abstract

Presently there are some challenging technological problems which severely restrain the progress of oil/gas development and production. To address these existing specific challenges, solutions enlightened and obtained from bionics have been applied. This paper reviews the applications of the most influential bionic technologies in the oil/gas development and production engineering, which include bionic non-smooth surface, shape memory polymer, bionic porous material, etc. Some successful field applications of these bionic technologies are described in detail, e.g. the application of the non-smooth theory in the solid expandable tubular technology to reduce friction resistance, and the utilization of bionic porous material as sand control screen to effectively improve sand retention and reduce the influent resistance. The vision of the potential bionic technologies, such as bionic inflow-control devices and nanorobots are also discussed.