Mobile drilling rig for hard-to-reach polar regions

Mobile drilling rig for polar regions with core drilling of snow-firn thickness and permafrost on a load-bearing cable.

General information

Contacts

General information

Developer: Saint Petersburg Mining University

Industry

Mining, Technologies for prospecting, exploration, development of mineral deposits and their extraction

Project Research Team

Head: Alexey Viktorovich Bolshunov Research team: Anatoly Yuryevich Ozhigin, Ilya Vitalyevich Rakitin, Sergey Anatolyevich Ignatyev, Danil Vasilyevich Serbin

Scientific novelty

A new technology for core drilling of snow-firn thickness of glaciers and permafrost using a tool on a load-bearing cable with reverse bottom-hole air circulation has been developed. The floating and transport velocities of ice cuttings in the ascending air flow have been experimentally established. The application of the inertial-gravitational cleaning principle is justified, taking into account the particle size distribution and bulk density of ice cuttings that change with depth.

Advantages

1) increased efficiency in drilling snow-firn sequences through an improved bottom-hole cuttings removal mechanism; 2) reduced risk of accidents due to enhanced monitoring of drilling process parameters; 3) improved mobility of the drilling rig and environmental friendliness of the process due to a significant reduction in equipment weight by using air as a cleaning agent; 4) reduced thermal pollution of the borehole due to the low heat capacity of air; 5) achievement of greater dry borehole depths in shorter timeframes compared to auger drills, opening new opportunities for numerous polar studies.

Commercial implementation

Electromechanical core drills on a load-bearing cable are used for drilling glaciers in polar and mountain regions of the Earth for glaciological and paleoclimatic research.