Mon, 24 November, 2025
We are pleased to announce the completion of the collaborative, Horizon Europe-funded COMPASS Project.
The project was created to develop, test and verify improved and innovative drilling and completion technologies for high temperature geothermal wells to increase the number of economically viable wells, and also reduce the environmental impact and cost associated with the provision of geothermal energy.
The project team, including experts from TWI and the University of Leicester’s School of Engineering Materials Innovation Centre, also produced a paper related to the project work, titled, “Investigation of Scaling and Materials’ Performance of EHLA-Fabricated Cladding in Simulated Geothermal Brine.”
The study investigates the corrosion and scaling behaviour of Extreme High-speed Laser Application (EHLA)-fabricated corrosion-resistant alloy (CRA) claddings under simulated geothermal brine conditions.
EHLA 316L stainless steel and alloy 625 coatings were produced and tested in simulated brine (chloride–carbonate–silica geothermal brine) at 70°C for 720 hours in order to evaluate the influence of additive manufacturing (AM) microstructures on corrosion performance.
The testing results indicate promising corrosion and scaling resistance of EHLA coatings, although further process optimisation and post-deposition thermal treatments might be required to achieve coating performance comparable to wrought alloys. The results indicated the potential of EHLA-fabricated coatings for producing corrosion and scaling resistance surfaces.
You can read the project paper, here:
https://www.mdpi.com/2079-6412/15/12/1366
You can find out more about the COMPASS Project on the dedicated website, here:
https://compass-geothermal.eu/
Funded by the European Union. This research (COMPASS) has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement nº. 101084623 and InnovateUK grant no. 10061668