Drilling and exploration technology continue to advance and companies are now looking for cost-effective yet reliable ways of drilling. Air-core drilling has surfaced as one of the most reputed ways of exploration and drilling resources. As an inexpensive method of exploration, air core drilling can be used to safely remove samples. Often, this method is preferred over other methods such as RAB. Unlike the diamond drilling method that draws only a small amount of core, aircore drilling is generally faster and an inexpensive way of drilling.
The method depends on compressed air to flush cutting samples from the drilled holes. This allows for a safer collection of the samples without causing damage to the area around the site or compromising the purity of the samples. This means that this method is effective in helping mining companies and analysts to have an accurate analysis of the samples collected during exploration.
How is it Applied?
If you are an organization looking to reduce the risk of contaminating the samples, aircore drilling will prove extremely important. Often used in first-pass exploration drill programs, air-core drilling has a higher depth capacity compared to a majority of other drilling methods. With an optimal depth of about 300 meters, this method can help exploration companies to get deeper into the core of the earth in order to obtain the samples.
Advantages of Air Core Drilling
Air core drilling has numerous advantages over other drilling methods. Here are some of the ways it beats other methods of drilling:
• It does not require casting of holes
• It allows the explorer to have a more representative sample of the materials being explored. This is because the method of expelling the materials minimizes the risks of contamination hence easy analysis.
• It is a safer method of removing samples. Since it is hinged on air injection, this method of drilling does not damage the samples compared to other methods such as blast drilling.
• It reduces the cost of obtaining sample materials, as it allows for real-time collection of samples, which reduces field costs.
• The rigs used are lighter than rigs used in other methods, hence they are easy and cheap to transport
• Minimal chances of cross-contamination. This is because compressed air is used to flush the cuttings.
Disadvantages
While air core drilling has many advantages, it also has a few disadvantages. The following are some of the downsides of this method:
It tends to be slower since the drills work slowly, making the drilling process a bit slower
It has limited depth because of its dependence on air pressure which reduces with increased depth.
Final thoughts
With quality air-core drilling techniques, resource exploration can prove much easier, fast, and cost-friendly. You need to ensure you have top-quality drill bits for better results.
