The scientists plan to replace the steel drill pipe with coiled tubing, and are also working on embedding sensors and electronic chips in the composite laminate tube to allow logging in real time.
By modifying existing techniques, the team intends to increase the drilling speed for mineral exploration from to 7,000 revolutions per minute from 50 revolutions per minute, while reducing costs and improving health and safety.
Curtin University Department of Petroleum Engineering professor Brian Evans said: "We’ve also decreased the borehole size, because by drilling continuously with small, low-cost impregnated diamond bits and increasing the speed, we are hoping to increase the rate of penetration substantially."
Before the drill will be commercially available, further testing will be carried out.
The project is a partnership with CSIRO, The University of Adelaide, and various mining and service companies through Deep Exploration Technologies Cooperative Research Centre.
Image: The Coiled Tube drill rig. Photo: courtesy of Curtin University.
