Core Drilling To Explore The Unknown
What now?
Core Drilling, the act of drilling or cutting material in a cylindrical shape either for the opening or the core sample. In this case they are drilling for the core sample.
The core drilling is a part of a larger project where they want to make a total of 30 water producing boreholes to alleviate the drought in the Western Cape. Core drilling dates back to Ancient Egypt approximately 3000BC, as expected the equipment has changed quite a lot but the end result stays the same. Here we have a modern drill rig that is used to drill to the ridiculous depths.
They are drilling in 6 meter sections which is quite a tedious task as you can imagine. They have to drill 6 meters, stop, connect up a new 6meter section of drill and then repeat the process.
The final depth they are planning to go to is an astounding 750 meters! The plan is to pull out sections and record the geological layout underground for future ventures. It will make it a lot easier to decide where to search for water and to know what to expect. Below is one of the segments of core sample brought to the top, there are so many interesting layers at the different depths. Some of them are quite brittle (mostly sandstone) others can be quite hard and come out as a solid piece (granite).
Here you can see the latest section was brought up from a depth of 460 meters.
It is quite weird to think that something so simple and normal (the rock formations are not uncommon on the surface) comes from so deep down and is so difficult to reach. I was hoping for some interesting formations or minerals, but alas, nothing noteworthy has been found thus far.
Some more info on core drilling and a source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_drill
interesting stuff. My wife grew up in Cape Town so we've been following the water issue there. I hope they hit it big and find water soon!!
At one of the boreholes they hit a 110000 l/hour vein at a shallow 36m which was quite impressive. The water is so strong that it collapsed the borehole at the bottom and they are now struggling to drill deeper.