Quaise Energy and their millemetre wave drilling for use in Geothermal energy production has been doing the rounds in the past week.
What do people think of the idea...both the millimetre wave 'drilling' and Quaise's thoughts on what they can get out of it.
https://news.mit.edu/2022/quaise-energy-geothermal-0628
https://www.quaise.energy/news/geotherm ... -deep-rock
Quaie Energy and Millimeter Wave 'drilling'
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Paul Nuttall
- Posts: 163
- Joined: Thu Nov 17, 2022 5:19 pm
Re: Quaie Energy and Millimeter Wave 'drilling'
I see a lot of problems. The heat of fusion is roughly comparable to water. Trying to do this will involve a lot of energy going down the hole, and I'm not sure that conventional deep hole drilling wouldn't be a better option. The vaporized rock has to be transported to the surface somehow, or it will condense onto the borehole surface and choke it off if deep enough. The currents depths drilled are in the 10 cm order of magnitude and purely in the lab.
So it comes down to asking why is it better than conventional drilling, what advantages would it bring, and is it more generally applicable?
Not that they can't do it, but I wouldn't put any money into the company.
So it comes down to asking why is it better than conventional drilling, what advantages would it bring, and is it more generally applicable?
Not that they can't do it, but I wouldn't put any money into the company.
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Kunkmiester
- Posts: 232
- Joined: Thu Nov 17, 2022 1:16 pm
Re: Quaie Energy and Millimeter Wave 'drilling'
I'd imagine you'd conventionally drill as far as you can, then put on the fancy bit and go the rest of the way.
The supposed advantage is you don't have a conventional drill wearing out 10 km down. That's a long drill chain to pull.
The supposed advantage is you don't have a conventional drill wearing out 10 km down. That's a long drill chain to pull.
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Nik_SpeakerToCats
- Posts: 1126
- Joined: Sat Dec 10, 2022 10:56 am
Re: Quaie Energy and Millimeter Wave 'drilling'
Does the rock stay 'vaporised', or simply spalled from cutting face then swept away as condensed 'granules' ?? The trouble with such press is that they can get so hyped on the wondrous advantages, they overlook explaining the basics...
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Belushi TD
- Posts: 852
- Joined: Thu Nov 17, 2022 11:20 am
Re: Quaie Energy and Millimeter Wave 'drilling'
The biggest problem they're going to face is getting the rock "vapor" out of the hole. As has been mentioned by others, if its a true vapor, they're going to need to get it out without it condensing on the sides of the boring or the drill steel. Its possible they could do a triple tube kind of a thing, with the inner tube being a vacuum of some sort, the energy being transmitted down the middle tube, and the outer tube being the casing.
Sonic drilling would be the model in that case. https://www.boartlongyear.com/insite/so ... ing-works/ Not going to copy paste the text, because the pictures are what I'm interested in. Its an extra tube, and I don't know how they'd go about engineering out the issues, but if they throw enough money and time at it, I'm sure they can make it work.
As others have also said, what benefit will it bring? 10 km is, in fact, a HELL of a drill string to pull out. Since the common lengths are 9 and 14 meters, when you need to trip out, it can take more than a single shift to do so. Can this technology actually be better than the current tricone or other specialized bits?
Also, what happens when you run into groundwater? As someone else mentioned, it would probably be better to use conventional drilling to drill the initial portions of the hole. Casing off the groundwater would be important. I'm guessing water would mess with the drilling rate something fierce.
Finally, it appears that the holes they are capable of now are fairly small. Looks like 2 inches, perhaps? I don't know what the standard geothermal pipe diameter is, but I strongly suspect its larger than 2 inches. I wonder how well the technology will scale diametrically. I suppose they could just standardize on a smaller diameter for this type of geothermal drilling, but that will cost in the short and middle term as well.
Belushi TD
Sonic drilling would be the model in that case. https://www.boartlongyear.com/insite/so ... ing-works/ Not going to copy paste the text, because the pictures are what I'm interested in. Its an extra tube, and I don't know how they'd go about engineering out the issues, but if they throw enough money and time at it, I'm sure they can make it work.
As others have also said, what benefit will it bring? 10 km is, in fact, a HELL of a drill string to pull out. Since the common lengths are 9 and 14 meters, when you need to trip out, it can take more than a single shift to do so. Can this technology actually be better than the current tricone or other specialized bits?
Also, what happens when you run into groundwater? As someone else mentioned, it would probably be better to use conventional drilling to drill the initial portions of the hole. Casing off the groundwater would be important. I'm guessing water would mess with the drilling rate something fierce.
Finally, it appears that the holes they are capable of now are fairly small. Looks like 2 inches, perhaps? I don't know what the standard geothermal pipe diameter is, but I strongly suspect its larger than 2 inches. I wonder how well the technology will scale diametrically. I suppose they could just standardize on a smaller diameter for this type of geothermal drilling, but that will cost in the short and middle term as well.
Belushi TD