Drilling Industry

Fig 1. PDC Drill bit
equipped with PDC.

Drilling is an important means for mankind to obtain rich resources. And with the rapid development of the world economy, people's demand for resource supply is increasing, which makes drilling particularly important. The drill bit is always at the center of the drilling process and technology chain. Because the nature of drilling is to break rock, and other drilling technologies, such as control, mud, etc., serve to break up rock. The drill material has gone through a very difficult development process and has several stages, from iron sand, steel grains, cemented carbide to diamond. It was not until the diamond stage that drilling technology really entered the fast track of development. The diamond drill bit used in drilling industry can be made from single crystal diamond, polycrystalline diamond, diamond composite material, of which the most widely used and most representative material is polycrystalline diamond compact (PDC). At present, drill bits made by PDC have been widely used in the search and exploration of various minerals, oil and gas, coal, groundwater, geothermal and others.

Typical Applications

• Geological drilling: At present, PDC drill bits are widely used in geological drilling fields around the world. They can not only be used for the drilling of soft to medium hard strata such as topsoil, marl, soft shale, salt rock, anhydrite, sandstone, clayrock, limestone, and hard shale, but also have a good performance and breakthrough progress in the drilling of strong abrasive strata, hard strata, interlayers, and ultra-deep wells. Mineral exploration and mining that has been used PDC drill bits includes coal, uranium, iron, manganese, copper, lead and zinc, bauxite, nickel, tungsten and so on. Nowadays, many types of PDC drill bits are commonly used in geological drilling, including coring drill bits, non-coring drill bits and steel PDC drill bits.

• Oil and gas exploitation: Oil and gas drilling is a very large engineering and has certain market risks. As a very critical component, the stability and reliability of the performance of the drill bit can be said to be crucial. After a series of technical improvements and innovations, the performances of PDC drill bits have been greatly improved and achieved impressive results. PDC drill bits can be used in oil and gas exploitation from shallow formations to deep wells of 4,500 to 6,000 meters, and they can also be used to oil and gas exploitation both onshore and offshore. At present. PDC drill bits are critical drilling tools for most formations in oil and gas exploration and drilling, with annual market size of more than $4.5 billion ^[1].

Advantages

Compared with the previous generation of carbide cone drill bit, the biggest advantage of PDC drill bits is that the drilling speed is fast, which can shorten the drilling time. Another advantage is that the working life of a single PDC drill bit is about 3 to 5 times that of a carbide cone drill bit. Therefore, PDC drill bits have irreplaceable advantages in shortening drilling cycle and saving drilling costs. According to previous report, in the case of the same formation, the drilling rate of PDC drill bit can be increased by 33% to 100%, the cost can be reduced by 30% to 50%, and the single footage can be increased by 3 to 4 times. In addition, the PDC drill bit has a simple structure with no moving parts, which eliminates the potential for accidents from the structure.

Meet Alfa Chemistry

At Alfa Chemistry, we are committed to providing the highest quality superhard materials and services to meet the needs of drilling industry. We have successfully developed various single crystal diamonds, polycrystalline diamonds, thermally stable polycrystalline diamonds (TSP) and polycrystalline diamond compacts (PDC), which can be used in drill bit manufacturing for oil and gas drilling, geological exploration, coal mining and others. With our advanced products and unparalleled expertise, we are confident that we can provide superior superhard material drill bit solutions for the drilling industry and help our customers gain a competitive advantage in the market with higher product performance and lower production costs to achieve their goals.