Novel deep drilling technology based on electric plasma developed in Slovakia

Worldwide, many research groups have been dealing with several innovative drilling technologies. Their common aim is to significantly decrease the overall price of the drilling process, particularly to keep the high constant speed, energy efficiency and shorter drilling time. The vision of geothermal energy, as the clean energy of the future, is currently one of the most driving challenge for development of new deep-drilling technologies. This paper presents one of such activities - development of novel technology based on electrical plasma for hard rock drilling. During this development, another application was identified as well - milling of steel casing and cement for well plug & abandonment operations.