Tag: drilling

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Manufacuring & Engineering

How Does Geothermal Drilling Rigs Work?

It is a pretty straightforward process when you work on a project that involves making water wells. What you need to do is take advantage of reliable drilling rigs to dig deep into the earth. It has to be deep enough to reach the water table below the ground. Then, upon reaching it, with the help of several pipes and a pump, you can draw water up from your water well.  

Of course, it is easier said than done, and there could be a little more work than anticipated. But when you look at it on a deeper level, digging for a water well is akin to geothermal good drilling. In that, where is all the confusion about the latter coming from?  

oil rig industry

Defining What Geothermal is All About 

Geothermal energy can be utilized for heating and cooling purposes. What it uses to achieve this purpose is the natural and consistent temperature of the earth, which is right under the ground. 

Depending on what needs to get done, it can be used in heating up your office, home, or business establishment during the cold months of  the year. You can also use it to cool down your space during summer.

With geothermal, what you can do with the heat is just move it. You can’t possibly generate heat of that magnitude. The temperature of the earth’s crust is consistently 55 degrees, throughout the year. Geothermal heating allows us to harness that temperature by moving it into and around your home.  

Advantages of Geothermal

In more ways than we know, geothermal cooling and heating systems are making traditional HVAC alternative trails behind them. Since we are tapping into the earth’s natural energy and are not putting the environment in harm’s way, we can say that geothermal is eco-friendly. With that, it takes out of the equation the need to burn fuel of whatever kind and form. 

Besides, geothermal is also affordable. In fact, if you compare it to natural gas to operate, it would often cost less. They are also the power of choice because they are reliable, efficient, quiet, and most importantly, low-maintenance.  

How Does Geothermal Work?

Moving heat seems like easy work to do, but it requires several pieces of equipment to get the job done right. Otherwise, it will just be a futile effort with no desirable results to produce.  The whole system is referred to as a “loop”. There are 2 common types of loops — open and closed. 

The open-loop system would be relying on 2 wells. One of which would act as a supply well while the other would serve as a return well. Its main delegation is to circulate water through the piping system that exists between the two. 

geothermal energy

The water solution, in a closed-loop system, is always inside the pipe system. It would circulate everywhere around your home’s ventilation system.  

How is Geothermal Drilling Going to Fare in the Future?

At the current rate of things going for this industry, it is ready now to embrace better and new technologies. It is because, overall, this industry, in its entirety, has remained relatively immature all these years.  

Speed of transfer and data acquisition will set the stage for formulating better and more informed decisions. This will lead the way for reduced NPT and full automation, even when this one is still, to a certain extent, way off

When it comes to hole geometries, it tends to become even more and more complex, allowing for better access to resources sans the need to move the rig continuously.

It will also make way for better management of resources, and thus extend the expected service life of every single well drilled. It is not like other resources, climate changes will not hurt the production of energy.  

We can also have high hopes in the sprouting of new and better materials for use within the process of drilling for a well. This will lay the needed groundwork for much deeper wells and smaller drilling rigs.  

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Manufacuring & Engineering

How Can Newly Found Drilling Techniques Help In Making Geothermal Power More Viable Today?

For eons and as far back as history could tell, humankind  has been tapping into the power of geothermal energy as a sustainable source of energy. Not to mention that we realized later that it is a clean source of power, meaning it is not detrimental to the surrounding environment. 

The indigenous people from all over the planet cook their daily food from the water of natural hot springs. The Maoris of New Zealand, for instance, are known for this kind of practice and they are bound to pass it on to their next generation. Did you know that even the ancient Romans engineered a way to harness the earth’s heat and divert this towards their buildings? This engineering marvel they pioneered in allowed them to warm up their houses during the coldest times of the year for soothing comfort.

Now, we move fast forward to the modern era. We drill deep into the earth to create geothermal wells so we can tap into the earth’s heat that is radiating from its core. We  transform this into electricity to power up homes, buildings, manufacturing facilities and many others.  

sonic drill

However, there is one challenge that has remained associated with geothermal wells all these years and that is the presence of hard rocks which is inevitable. They actually work against any kind of drilling techniques you will use in a drilling project and will slow down the work. Not to mention also that they accelerate the wearing down of your drill bits.With this kind of scenario in mind, this will likely extend your drilling time and alongside that is the increase of your drilling expense, too.

In order to surmount such a challenge, a drilling technology known as the Shockwave and Plasma Accelerated Rock Cracking or SPARC was developed by the Texas A&M University’s  Department of Mechanical Engineering team. By virtue of laying out the foundations for an easier, more convenient, and cost-effective way  to create geothermal wells, the U.S.  Department of Energy initiated funding for the project. The long term benefit of which will make geothermal energy a more viable form of power as opposed to the use of fossil fuels.  

The said drilling technology being worked on is capable of increasing drilling rates or the rate of penetration. Moreover, it would also alleviate the wear and tear of the drill bits used in the traditional drilling work. This can be made possible by precracking or prestressing the rock being drilled just before the drill bit cutting action takes place.  

This technological breakthrough, SPARC, will be equipping the tip traditional drill bits with electrodes of high voltage. What  makes them distinct is that they are capable of emitting a microscopic plasma discharge that will shock the hard rocks under the ground and crack them open with a tiny explosion. The fractures created will help in weakening the rock, consequently allowing the drill head to penetrate through them with their traditional diamond cutters

Apart from setting the stage for geothermal energy and its further development, the use of electric plasma burst will not just help increase our drill techniques’ rate of penetration but it will also significantly help an awful lot in streamlining our drilling processes so that, ultimately, we will have an even more cost competitive form of energy production.  

We consider geothermal energy as one of the most efficient base-load resources of clean energy. Hence, it just makes sense if we will make it an integral part of our country’s diverse energy portfolio. These new developments in drilling techniques will significantly help in cost alleviation and  put up the availability for this renewable resource of energy.  

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Manufacuring & Engineering

Piling Rigs for Sale: What are They?

If your line of work is involved with the mine drilling exploration industry what will your reaction be like if you came across piling rigs for sale? Would you be compelled to check it out and find out what it is to your business? 

Before delving deeper into this, we need to have a clear picture of what a piling rig is. 

Defining Piling Rigs

Piling rigs are a qualified construction machine. They are basically used for piling purposes in foundation engineering and are usually used for drilling in silty, sandy soil, clay, etc. Besides those areas, their application has also found its way in diaphragm walls, cast-in-place piles, foundation reinforcement, and several other similar foundation projects. 

With its power of engine rated at around 108-450 kW, maximum pile diameter 1.5-4 m, output torque at 60-40 kNm and depth of 60-90 m — these are the attributes that allow it to meet construction and building requirements for foundation engineering projects. 

These types of drilling rigs are used in driving piles deep into the soil or ground to create foundation support for bridges, buildings, and other structures.  It makes use of automatic lift box-type mast, hydraulic crawler chassis, telescopic drill pipe, depth indicator, auto vertical adjuster, etc. The operation would be applying load sensor and hydraulic pilot control, to facilitate ease of control. 

The rig is primarily used in piling construction in wet soil (rotary bucket), dry soil (short screw) and rock (core drill). It is made possible when you equip it with a drilling tool, long screw drill, vibratory hammer, or diaphragm wall grab, and many others for it to have many different functionalities. 

A heavyweight will be positioned between guides. By this measure, you provide it a mechanism for an upward and downward movement in a single line. When they are placed upon a pile, they will be raised instead of guided by hydraulics. Reaching its optimum height, the weight will be released. Expectedly, such action will hammer the pile, and thus drive them down into the ground.  

piling rigs for sale

It is mainly applied in foundation engineering of expressways, industrial and civil buildings, water conservation projects, municipal constructions, diaphragm walls, and even for slope protection. 

Piling Rigs for Sale in Perspective

Buoyed by many different kinds of road infrastructure developments and metro rails,  the piling and foundation equipment industry is gradually being renewed with distributors and manufacturers offering robustly built machines to undertake piling works at deeper depths. They are marked by flexibility and greater precision in working at hard strata and different kinds of soil formations. 

It is obvious to see also that the industry is slowly veering away from the use of tractor mounted rigs. The same thing is also true with tripod methods that cater to complex structures,  with hydraulic rotary piling rigs as one of the modern technologies that it is using. This wave of change is revolutionizing execution speed, boring precision, and allows for the better handling of greater depth and larger bore diameters.