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Microwave Drilling Sounds Like Science Fiction but So Does Drilling Down to the Hottest RockOne of the problems with geothermal is that the rock that is hot enough to create the steam needed to run a power plant is also capable of destroying drilling hardware.
I took a look at Quaise about a year ago to see if we could collaborate. There were some significant challenges in scaling this technique from the laboratory to the real world and certainly to the depths that are being hyped. For the MM wave to propagate downhole they need to have extremely tight tolerances on the ID of the pipe or tubular beyond the tolerances of even the best pipe manufactured today, they also need no gap between joints otherwise the signal is significantly attenuated, a very precise corrugated sleeve needs to be run the entire length of the string to transmit the signal. Lastly the process will generate hydrogen so how do you mange hydrogen and super hot temperatures. Saying all this the biggest competition to MM wave is conventional PDC technology and advances in Particle Impact Drilling. Conventional PDC has delivered 2000ft runs at 75 ft/Hr on Forge. (Self at al GRC Vol 45 2021) and Particle Impact Drilling/PDC hybrids are doing 48ft/Hr over 500ft (Pink et al GRC Vol 46 2022). the DOE will be a well in April and it is hoped that the ROPs will be 100ft/Hr + and over 2000ft.