Emerging the dual string drilling and dual coil tubing drilling technology in a geothermal well applications

Abstract

The challenges found in geothermal well drilling have forced the industry to develop new significant cost effective, time saver technologies to go for deeper geothermal resources beyond their traditional limits. To overcome these challenges, the new Dual String Drilling (DSD) technology which is based on penetration pathway of drilling fluid and rock cuttings during drilling a well. The principle of DSD employs drilling fluid flows through the annulus of inner and outer string pipe while cutting from the bottom of the well through inner pipe. The paper describes the novel Dual String Drilling (DSD) technology, predicting their occurrence and advantages on drilling of geothermal well. The outcome shows that with DSD approach a lot of time will be saved to circulate the kick out of the well. Additionally, the characteristic response of DSD enables to improve the hole cleaning capacity, to prevent pipe stuck, better well stability, reduction in torque and drag, to remove the dynamic equivalent circulating density gradient in geothermal wells. Moreover, the paper also depicts the system and method for dual coil tubing drilling of horizontal well which follows the same principle as DSD. The comparison of DSD with conventional drilling assesses that the DSD technology is affordable and appropriate for geothermal well drilling.

Keywords

Dual string drilling / Geothermal energy / Kick detection

Authors contribution

All the authors make a substantial contribution to this manuscript. JS, NV and MS participated in drafting the manuscript. JS, NV and MS wrote the main manuscript. All the authors discussed the results and implication on the manuscript at all stages.

Availability of data and materials

All relevant data and materials are presented in the main paper.

Declaration of competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to School of Petroleum Technology, Centre of Excellence for Geothermal Energy, and Department of Chemical Engineering, School of Technology, Pandit Deendayal Energy University for the permission to publish this research.

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