Title: Coiled Tube Turbodrilling: a proposed technology to optimise drilling deep hard rocks for mineral exploration

Authors: Amir Mokaramian; Vamegh Rasouli; Gary Cavanough

Addresses: Deep Exploration Technologies Cooperative Research Centre (DET CRC) and Department of Petroleum Engineering, Curtin University, Level 6, Rear side of ARRC Building, 26 Dick Perry Ave., Technology Park, Kensington, Perth 6151, Australia ' Deep Exploration Technologies Cooperative Research Centre (DET CRC) and Department of Petroleum Engineering, Curtin University, Level 6, Rear side of ARRC Building, 26 Dick Perry Ave., Technology Park, Kensington, Perth 6151, Australia ' Deep Exploration Technologies Cooperative Research Centre (DET CRC), and CSIRO, Queensland Centre for Advanced Technologies (QCAT), Technology Court, Pullenvale Qld Australia 4069, P.O. Box 883, Kenmore Q 4069, Australia

Abstract: The need to drill deep boreholes more efficiently for mineral exploration has raised the attention to investigate the feasibility of recent drilling technologies for such applications. The two principal methods of Reverse Circulation (RC) and diamond core drilling are usually used in combination by mine operators are subjected to certain limitations and inefficiencies. Considering that delivering large volume of reliable samples from deep zones to the surface in shortest possible time is of paramount importance in mineral exploration, then drilling small size holes as fast as possible and delivering the small chip samples to the surface would be a good alternative with several advantages over conventional drilling methods. As a result, the Coiled Tube (CT) turbodrilling technology is proposed here followed by presenting detailed calculations for the system required power and hydraulics and also Bottom Hole Assembly (BHA) selection suitable for hard rocks mineral exploration applications.

Keywords: mineral exploration; hard rock drilling; exploration drilling; coiled tubing; coiled tube turbodrilling; drilling power; drilling hydraulics; deep boreholes; deep drilling; bottom hole assembly; BHA selection.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMME.2013.053171

International Journal of Mining and Mineral Engineering, 2013 Vol.4 No.3, pp.224 - 248

Received: 21 Jul 2012
Accepted: 07 Feb 2013

Published online: 02 Aug 2013 *

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