Bauer, Donat, Rueter: Geothermal Exploration Best Practices,

geophysical methods, seismic, equipment

IGA Academy Report 0106-2013

Geothermal Exploration Best Practices, geophysical methods,

seismic, equipment
Stefan Bauer, Andreas Donat, Horst Rueter1)
1) HarbourDom GmbH Kln, Germany

Abstract: Seismic exploration methods along lines (2D) or in areas (3D) are the preferred method to explore conductive geothermal targets as in basin or graben structures. Seismic exploration is widely used in hydrocarbon

Introduction

The marked for seismic instrumentation is at least for

larger 3D surveys dominated by a few leading companies. In the following we will not try to present all
possible instruments but give some general examples.
For all components also alternatives exist that m< be
used for geothermal exploration

Seismic Sources (Vibroseis)

2.1

Vibrators

Generally for larger (deeper penetrating) seismic

surveys there are two alternatives for seismic sources:
-

Explosives

Vibrators

As nowadays mainly vibrators are used we will describe here vibrators only. For very shallow applications additional alternatives are many other sources,
which will not be described here.
In the following we will describe vibrators from
Sercel, France, ION, USA and IVI, USA. There are
alternatives for instance from Russian companies and
others. But the given examples are sufficient to show
which parameters are available to choose the right
vibrators.

2.1.1

Vibrators from Sercel

Nomad 65/65T

Figure 1: Vibrators Nomad 65 (left) and Nomad 65 T

(right) (Sercel)
Table 1: Technical specifications of the vibrators SVNomad 65/65T (Sercel)
Type

Nomad 65 4 x 4 Nomad 65T 4

x4

Force

276 kN (62000 276

kN
lbf)
(62000 lbf)

Piston area

133,4 cm2

133,4 cm2

Maximum lift

76,2 mm

76,2 mm

Weight on base 1560 kg

plate
Sice of base plate

1560 kg

12302130 mm 12302130
mm

Area of base plate 2,62 m2

2,62 m2

Vibrator control

Sercel VE 432

Sercel
432

Total weight

28571 kg

41500 kg

VE

Bauer, Donat, Rueter: Geothermal Exploration Best Practices,

geophysical methods, seismic, equipment

IGA Academy Report 0106-2013

Weight
plate

Nomad 90/90T

on

base 3683 kg

Sice of base plate

Figure 2: Vibrators Nomad 90 (left) and Nomad 90T

(right) (Sercel)

Nomad 90 4 x 4 Nomad 90T 4

x4

Force

400,3
kN 400,3
kN
(89995 lbf)
(89995 lbf)

Piston area

157 cm2

157 cm2

Maximum lift

10,16 mm

10,16 mm

Weight on base 2300 kg

plate
Sice of base plate

Vibrator control

Pelton Advanced III / Vib

Pro

Total weight

25968 kg 29937 kg

2300 kg
Figure 4: Vibrator X-Vib (ION)

20001430 mm 20001430
mm

Area of base plate 2,86 m2

2,86 m2

Vibrator control

Sercel VE 432

Sercel
432

Total weight

38500 kg

44200 kg

2.1.2

2,5 m2

XVib

Table 2: Technical specifications of vibrators SVNomad 90/90T (Sercel)

Type

Area of base plate

The technical specifications X-Vib are mostly similar

to those of AHV-IV but this has a caterpillar drive.
Table 4: Technical specifications for the vibrators XVib of ION

VE

Vibrators from ION (I/O)

AHV-IV

Type

Buggy, 4x4

Force

275 kN (61800 lbf)

Piston area

132,9 cm2

Maximum lift

98,3 mm

Weight
plate

on

base 3683 kg

Sice of base plate

Figure 3: Vibrator AHV-IV (ION)

Table 3: Technical specifications of the vibrators
AHV-IV of ION
Type

Buggy, 4x4

Force

275 kN (61800 lbf)

Piston area

132,9 cm2

Maximum lift

98,3 mm

Area of base plate

2,5 m2

Vibrator control

Pelton Advanced III / Vib

Pro

Total weight

3956 kg

Bauer, Donat, Rueter: Geothermal Exploration Best Practices,

geophysical methods, seismic, equipment

2.1.3

IGA Academy Report 0106-2013

Vibrators from IVI

Pelton Vib Pro

HEMI 50

Figure 5: Vibrator HEMI 50 (IVI)

Table 5: Technical specifications of the vibrators
HEMI 50 of IVI
Type

Truck, 4x4 oder 6x6

Force

223,1 kN (50160 lbf)

Piston area

107,9 cm2

Maximum lift

76,2 mm

Weight
plate

on

Figure 6: Vibrator control system Vib Pro from Pelton (ION)

Table 6: Technical specifications of the Pelton Vib
Pro control system

base 2640 kg

Frequency range

Sice of base plate

1 Hz 500 Hz

Area of base plate

2,73 m2

Maximum numbers 31
of vibrators

Vibrator control

Pelton Advanced III / Vib

Pro

Time accuracy

1 ppm

Total weight

25593 kg

Accuracy of T0

+/- 20 s

Sercel VE-432
2.2

Vibrator Control Systems

Vibrator control systems are an integral and important part of the acquisition instruments chain.
They organize the
- Correspondence between the vibrator and the recording truck
- Generate the sweeps
- Synchronise the sweeps between different vibrators
- Control the vibrating force
Actually the most used vibrator control systems are
those of Pelton (now ION) (Advanced III/Vib Pro)
and Sercel (VE-432). Nearly all vibrators may use
those control systems.
Figure 7: Vibrator control system VE-432 from Sercel.(Sercel)
Table 7: Technical specifications of the Sercel VE432 Vibrator control system
3

Bauer, Donat, Rueter: Geothermal Exploration Best Practices,

geophysical methods, seismic, equipment

Frequency range

IGA Academy Report 0106-2013

1 Hz 250 Hz in 1 Hz steps

trical current proportional to the ground vibration

velocity (induction).

Maximum num- 28
bers of vibrators
Time accuracy

1 ppm

Accuracy of T0

+/- 50 s

As the coil is able to swing in its resonance frequency

it is necessary to damp their movement

Seismic receivers

With receivers we understand the entire recording

chain that consists of:

3.1

Geophones

Geophone strings

Receiver electronics

cables

Figure 9: Geofone in plastic housing with earth

coupling pin
To perform seismic field surveys large numbers of
geophones are needed which have to moved and
transported in the field. Handling will be rough including planting the geophones in the soil just by
pushing it with the boots. Geophones need to be
contracted very robust and water dense, as can be
seen in figure 9. The most significant specific parameter for geophones is its natural frequency. It defines
the lowest possible recording frequency. A higher
natural frequency allows a priory damping of low
frequent noise. This possibility is however nowadays
less important because of the high dynamic range of
modern recording instruments.

Geophones

To gain information about the vibrations of the subsurface including the reflection from discontinuities
usually passive geophones are used, which transfers
the vibration into electrical signals. Those may be
recorded in analogue form, but nowadays they will be
digitized and stored digitally. Alternatives to geophones would be accelerometers. The standard geophone is a moving coil assembly where the coil
moves with a permanent magnet. This causes physically induction, i.e. 1. derivation of the vibrations
amplitudes, usually called ground velocity. The
standard geophones may pick up vibrations in frequency range from some Hz to 100 Hz. There natural
(resonance) frequency is 7-10 Hz.

The as alternative also possible accelerometers (recording the 2. derivative of the vibration amplitudes)
consist of more complicated electronics called
MEMS (micro-electro-mechanical systems). Figure
10 shows housing and interior of a typical accelerometer sensor (ION). It contains 3 components enabling
a vector recording of the ground movement.

Figure 8 shows a sketch of a typical geophone with

the permanent magnet and the coil placed in circular
opening within the magnet. The coil is also a bulk
mass and is hold by flat springs allowing movement
within the circular opening.

Figure 8: Sketch of an analog moving coil geophone.

Left vertical cut, right horizontal cut

Figure 10: Housng ansd interior of a 3 componanet

accelerometer (ION)

Caused by the vibrations the coil will move (as an

inertial mass) within the magnet and induce an elec-

Bauer, Donat, Rueter: Geothermal Exploration Best Practices,

geophysical methods, seismic, equipment

3.2

IGA Academy Report 0106-2013

3.3.1

Geophone-Strings

In field survey geophones are not used as single

phones but as larger geophone strings, switched together in parallel or serial (Figure 11). This has several reasons:
-

Lower sensitivity to ground coupling irregularities

Increased sensitivity (current and voltage)

Damping each other

Wavelength filtering (pattern)

ARAM

ARIES RAM

Figure 12: RAM Instruments from ARAM

The RAM (Remote Acquisition System) System from
ARAM is a 24 bit (23 + sign) recording unit with 4, 6
or 8 channels per unit (programmable). In addition to
the recoding units Line tap units (LTU) have to be
used.

Figure 11: Geofone string (ready for transport)

Environmental noise as caused from wind or rain
may be decreased by using strings. If the geophone
strings are planted in well designed patterns they act
as wavelength filters and suppress external noise
(traffic) or source generated noise (surface waves)
3.3

3.3.2

ION

Scorpio, FireFly, RSR/VRSR

Actually ION offers three systems: The cable system
Scorpion, the cable less system FireFly and the system RSR/VRSR (Remote Seismic Recorder/VectorSeis Remote Seismic Recorder). All ION
systems may be used as well with traditional geophones as with VectorSeis digital accelerometers. For
geothermal exploration (until now) mainly Scorpion
or FireFly are used.

Seismic Acquisition Instruments 3D

3D seismic field surveys as part of geothermal exploration are in principle equal to hydrocarbon exploration. The explored areas are usually smaller and cost
factors may be more significant. Nevertheless the
equipment mostly used in hydrocarbon exploration is
regarded as to be used in geothermal exploration too.
We describe here the instruments of the leading producers: ARAM, ION and Sercel. Those entire instruments allow a (practically) unlimited number of
recording channels.

Bauer, Donat, Rueter: Geothermal Exploration Best Practices,

geophysical methods, seismic, equipment

IGA Academy Report 0106-2013

tion using LAUR-428 stations (max. 30 channels) are

offered.

Figure 13: AU Receiver (lower left) with BBU and

XLU (upper left). Upper right it the receiver unit AU2
(ION)
The Scorpio system is either based on the analog 24
bit units AU or AU2 (Figure 13), with 3 recording
channels each ot on the digital units (D.units) to connect VectorSeis accelerometers (Figure 14). In addition cross line units (XLU) and battery booster units
(BBU) have to be used.

Figure 15: Receiver units 408 UL (upper part) and

428 XL (lower part) (Sercel)
Unite
The cable less Unite-system contains the receiver
units (max. 4 channels per unit) (Figure 16). The
units communicate wireless with so called Cell Acess
Nodes (CAN) and those communicate with the recording truck.

Figure 14: VectorSeis digital 3D-accelerometer (left)

and FireFly unit with antenna (right) (ION)
3.3.3

Sercel

RSR/VRSR
Sercel actually offers to cable systems (408 UL and
428 XL), which can be used partially without cables
and the principal cable less system Unite. The newer
system 428 XL (Figure 15) can be also connected to
the digital accelerometers DSU 3-428. To use those
systems cable less Wireless Line Repeater Units
(LRU) are needed. Additional wireless communica-

Bauer, Donat, Rueter: Geothermal Exploration Best Practices,

geophysical methods, seismic, equipment

IGA Academy Report 0106-2013

Figure 17: SUMMIT II Plus receiver from DMT

3.4.2

GEOMETRICS

Geode
The geode system offered from Geometrix (Figure
18) has 24 bit receiver boxes with 24 channels. Those
may be connected by cable to enable larger channel
numbers
Figure 16: Digital accelerometer sensor DSU3-428
(upper part) und cable less Unite receiver unit (lower
part) (Sercel)
3.4

Seismic Acquisition Instruments 2D

The following equipment may be used for smaller 3D

applications as well but is mainly built for 2D surveys. The maximum number of recording channels is
limited and the communication speed between remote
units and central recorder may be too slow for extended 3D surveys.
3.4.1

Figure 18: Geode receiver from GEOMETRICS

Geode DZ
The Geode DZ System combines 24-Bit receiver
units (Figure 19) with 8 channels each that are connected via cable to an Ethernet network. Additional
Line Tap Units (LTU) are needed. The maximum
number of lines is 16 which add up to maximum 480
channels.

DMT

SUMMIT
The company DMT produces with the system Summit II plus (Figure 17) a 24 bit system with two
channels per remote unit. Data transmission to the
recording truck is via cable. The system allows high
resolution recordings with extreme high sampling
rates.

Figure 19: Geode DZ receiver from GEOMETRICS

Bauer, Donat, Rueter: Geothermal Exploration Best Practices,

geophysical methods, seismic, equipment

3.4.3

IGA Academy Report 0106-2013

Seismic Source Co

The RAS-24 System is also marketed by ABEM,

only with different housing color.

DAQ Link II

EX-6 Explorer

Seismic Source offers with the Link II System 24-Bit

receivers (Figure 20), with 6 to 24 channels connected via cable Ethernet to a central unit.

The EX-6 Explorer from Seistronix contains 24-Bit

receivers (Figure 22), with 6 channels each, connected with the central unit. Additionally larger lay outs
need Line Tap Units (LTU) and repeater units. The
maximum number of channels is following manufacturer specifications 2400.

Figure 20: DAQ Link IIreceiver from Seismic Source

Co)
3.4.4

Seistronix

RAS-24
Figure 22: EX-6 receiver from Seistronix

The RAS-24 System (Figure 21) from Seistronix

contains 24 bit receiver units with 12 to 24 channels
each. They may be connected by cable to a maximum
of 240 channels.

References
See report 0109-2013.

Figure 21: RAS-24 receiver from Seistronix