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Final Project Newsletter Released

Mon, 24 July, 2023

A final newsletter has been released for Geo-Drill as the consortium prepare to close the project.

The Geo-Drill consortium have been working together to tackle the challenges faced by geothermal energy to help revolutionise the wider energy sector.

The project aimed to advance drilling technology through the development of robust, low-cost 3D sensors for monitoring operations, as well as delivering advanced materials and coatings to extend the lifecycle of geothermal drilling assets.

Together, these innovations can make geothermal energy a more appealing prospect for investors and energy suppliers through reduced costs as a result of the improved efficiencies delivered by Geo-Drill.

The final project newsletter highlights the advances made in coating and drilling technologies through a Q&A session with members of the Geo-Drill consortium, as well as detailing the live field testing that took place at the Fraunhofer IEG, Bochum live geothermal site.

The success of the project has seen our work captured in the Journal of Thermal Spray Technology, the Corrosion Science journal, and even in the European Commission's 'Result Pack on Geothermal Energy', which showcase showcasws how our innovative technologies revolutionised the cost-effectiveness and durability of geothermal drilling.

Of course, the project team also worked hard to disseminate the results through a series of events, including Fraunhofer IEG’s Volker Wittig’s webinar where he spotlighted the ground-breaking progress made by the project in 'Down the Hole' (DTH) drilling systems, showcasing our novel DTH-type percussion mechanism, which was designed to make percussion drilling more successful and cost-effective. Elsewhere, by Sigrun Nanna Karlsdottir from the University of Iceland, shone a light on the complexities of geothermal energy extraction and the ground-breaking corrosion mitigation strategies being developed by the Geo-Drill project in her talk, 'Material Characterisation and Testing of Coatings for Corrosion Challenges in High-Temperature Geothermal Power Production.'

Meanwhile, the Geo-Drill project team have appeared at numerous conferences and presented at a range of events over the past four years.

Through the development of innovative coatings and the use of technologies like rotary friction welding, the Geo-Drill team have made significant strides in deep geothermal drilling technology, introducing a revolutionary Down The Hole (DTH) hammer that harnesses a fluidic oscillator rather than a traditional valve, thus paving the way for improved durability, resistance to environmental influences, and use with high-solids drilling fluids.

By aligning robust designs with advanced simulations and expertise in high-performance coatings, the Geo-Drill consortium have delivered ground-breaking technologies, including a bi-stable fluidic amplifier-driven mud hammer and 3D-printed sensors, that promise a future beyond the current state-of-the-art in geothermal drilling, greatly enhancing the lifetime of operations in the demanding environments associated with geothermal operations.

There is still time to subscribe and see the final newsletter, here.

 

The Geo-Drill project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 815319