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Technology Development and Field Trials of EGS Drilling Systems at Chocolate Mountain

Metadata Updated: January 20, 2025

Polycrystalline diamond compact (PDC) bits are routinely used in the oil and gas industry for drilling medium to hard rock but have not been adopted for geothermal drilling, largely due to past reliability issues and higher purchase costs. The Sandia Geothermal Research Department has recently completed a field demonstration of the applicability of advanced synthetic diamond drill bits for production geothermal drilling. Two commercially-available PDC bits were tested in a geothermal drilling program in the Chocolate Mountains in Southern California. These bits drilled the granitic formations with significantly better Rate of Penetration (ROP) and bit life than the roller cone bit they are compared with. Drilling records and bit performance data along with associated drilling cost savings are presented herein. The drilling trials have demonstrated PDC bit drilling technology has matured for applicability and improvements to geothermal drilling. This will be especially beneficial for development of Enhanced Geothermal Systems whereby resources can be accessed anywhere within the continental US by drilling to deep, hot resources in hard, basement rock formations.

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: Creative Commons Attribution

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Dates

Metadata Created Date January 11, 2025
Metadata Updated Date January 20, 2025

Metadata Source

Harvested from OpenEI data.json

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date January 11, 2025
Metadata Updated Date January 20, 2025
Publisher Sandia National Laboratories
Maintainer
Doi 10.15121/1225980
Identifier https://data.openei.org/submissions/6503
Data First Published 2012-01-01T07:00:00Z
Data Last Modified 2017-05-18T22:47:53Z
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 019:20
Metadata Context https://openei.org/data.json
Metadata Catalog ID https://openei.org/data.json
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Data Quality True
Datagov Dedupe Retained 20250120143002
Harvest Object Id aee16f68-02cc-4bb4-b548-c88811ce36dc
Harvest Source Id 7cbf9085-0290-4e9f-bec1-91653baeddfd
Harvest Source Title OpenEI data.json
Homepage URL https://gdr.openei.org/submissions/140
License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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Program Code 019:006
Projectlead Arlene Anderson
Projectnumber AID 20008
Projecttitle Technology Development and Field Trials of EGS Drilling Systems
Source Datajson Identifier True
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