A 12 km long pipe seems like a ridiculous length for any of that to be possible. Isn’t it like trying to drill a hole with a 258 ft long piece of spaghetti?
In: 1335
12km worth of pipe + gravity would probably do some work in applying pressure at the business end of the drill.
12km worth of pipe + gravity would probably do some work in applying pressure at the business end of the drill.
I might be wrong but I think OPs question is more along the lines of “how is it possible that a drill bit inches thick and kilometers long has enough torque at the end of the bit to actually drill through rock?”
This is a question a can’t answer and i don’t see addressed by anyone yet. It’s a great question. A 1/16th inch bit would snap off of drilling through pretty much anything if it were meters long.
The bha mostly the mud motor, I am sure there’s agitators, as well as the drilling mud and of course the drill bit have to appropriate for the job.
Plus, drill pipe standard size is about 30ft or ~9m. So basically after each 30ft section, the drilling is paused so that a new stand can be attached. To save time, 3 drill pipes are usually connected or 1 stand, so about 90ft or 27km of pipe is connected at one time. This has to do with heigh (and weight) limitations of the kelly bushing and the crown block height. There’s no drilling rig that has a 12km or ~39k ft drill string completely pre-assembled (HOLY MOLY if it were). So, attaching new stands when appraching the reaching the 90ft/~9m new connection point. Plus, replacing the mud motor, bit, and adjusting the drilling mud parameters when needed all help optimize the drilling process.
Source: I am a directional drilling engineer
I might be wrong but I think OPs question is more along the lines of “how is it possible that a drill bit inches thick and kilometers long has enough torque at the end of the bit to actually drill through rock?”
This is a question a can’t answer and i don’t see addressed by anyone yet. It’s a great question. A 1/16th inch bit would snap off of drilling through pretty much anything if it were meters long.
The bha mostly the mud motor, I am sure there’s agitators, as well as the drilling mud and of course the drill bit have to appropriate for the job.
Plus, drill pipe standard size is about 30ft or ~9m. So basically after each 30ft section, the drilling is paused so that a new stand can be attached. To save time, 3 drill pipes are usually connected or 1 stand, so about 90ft or 27km of pipe is connected at one time. This has to do with heigh (and weight) limitations of the kelly bushing and the crown block height. There’s no drilling rig that has a 12km or ~39k ft drill string completely pre-assembled (HOLY MOLY if it were). So, attaching new stands when appraching the reaching the 90ft/~9m new connection point. Plus, replacing the mud motor, bit, and adjusting the drilling mud parameters when needed all help optimize the drilling process.
Source: I am a directional drilling engineer
Jump up and you fall down. The drillstring is in a controlled fall, and does not need pushing. If you hold a wet spagetti firm in one end and continuously twist/rotate the other, at one point it is twisted enough such that the firm end will start to rotate too. Only ~100meter of the drill string is in compression regardless of well length, and the rest is in tension, meaning its just hanging there and spinning around. If you stand on the ground and start to pull yourself up, you can have tension in your arms and compression in your feet at the same time (assuming your feet still touch the ground).
Jump up and you fall down. The drillstring is in a controlled fall, and does not need pushing. If you hold a wet spagetti firm in one end and continuously twist/rotate the other, at one point it is twisted enough such that the firm end will start to rotate too. Only ~100meter of the drill string is in compression regardless of well length, and the rest is in tension, meaning its just hanging there and spinning around. If you stand on the ground and start to pull yourself up, you can have tension in your arms and compression in your feet at the same time (assuming your feet still touch the ground).
12km down? Are you referring to the deepest hole ever dug? With super deep boreholes like that, you can’t spin the hole pipe. They developed special rigs that kept the hole vertical, and they had to reinforce the walls on the way down.
12km down? Are you referring to the deepest hole ever dug? With super deep boreholes like that, you can’t spin the hole pipe. They developed special rigs that kept the hole vertical, and they had to reinforce the walls on the way down.
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