JOEL MOXLEY: Foro Energy is commercializing high power lasers in the energy industry.
We take the highest-power industrial lasers in the world, and we use our breakthrough
technology to transmit these immensely powerful laser beams down fiber-optic cables the size
of fishing line.
We integrate these lasers into conventional mechanical tools to allow the potential for
breakthrough performance and capabilities.
Most of our economy and jobs and are powered by energy that we pull out from beneath the
surface of the earth.
For U.S. security and competitiveness, we need to produce as much of that energy domestically
as possible.
We also know that a good energy portfolio consists of clean natural gas and geothermal
power.
Technology innovation is a key to getting these next-generation energy resources.
Foro Energy’s mission is to drill and perform a variety of other well operations faster,
safer, cheaper and more effectively than the conventional technologies today.
We think the laser is going to do the same thing to the energy industry that it did to
the telecommunications, automotive and medical industries.
MARK ZEDIKER: I’ve been developing lasers for industrial and military applications for
nearly 30 years.
Over the past decade, fiber lasers have accelerated in technology development.
In particular, they’re a much more robust design.
They’re higher efficiency.
They’re more compact.
And so now it enables us to take these lasers into the field.
It occurred to me about three years ago that it would be very interesting to try and combine
laser technology with the energy fields to try and help the growing energy needs of the
world.
The original ARPA-E grant was to develop a laser drilling system capable of drilling
through hard crystalline rock.
The fundamental problem with achieving this was, how do you transmit the laser power from
the surface to the bottom of the borehole?
This was thought to be impossible because of a nonlinear phenomenon called stimulated
Brillouin scattering.
And this phenomenon, once it reaches threshold, can actually cause the laser power to transmit
backwards through the fiber rather than forward.
The problem is that it could cause catastrophic damage to many of the optical components as
well as the laser itself.
This is a course that Foro Energy has worked to solve.
SECRETARY STEVEN CHU: With the help of ARPA-E funding, Foro has been able to overcome this
technical challenge of how to suppress stimulated Brillouin scattering.
And so we’re very pleased that they’ve made tremendous progress being able to send
high-intensity laser light through long distances in fiber where many other people thought it
was going to be impossible.
PAUL DEUTCH: We’re always on the lookout for innovation opportunities with the potential
of step change performance in the energy industry.
Historically, these have been incremental, because it’s easier for companies to improve
upon their existing products, and it’s really hard for small companies to overcome the barriers
and challenges, whether they’re technical, financial or cultural.
Over the past couple years, with the ARPA-E program, Foro has been able to actually prove
you can transmit high power over long distances, understand the most efficient and productive
way to remove rock, and build the prototype that integrated commercial off-the-shelf products
with high power laser optical components that gives you the level of comfort we can use
this technology downhole.
We’ve now identified a set of industry partners that will help us not just to drill geothermal
and oil and gas wells but also rework existing wells to improve their production.
MR.
MOXLEY: When we wrote our initial ARPA-E proposal, we were four people in a cramped office with
an idea.
A few short years later, we have significant additional financing, world-class energy leaders
as partners and a talented team in Colorado and Texas that combines the highly technical
with the practical experience we need to make this happen.
Lots of people have talked about using high power lasers in the energy industry.
We want to be the ones to do it.
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