Mechanism of drilling rate improvement using high-pressure liquid nitrogen jet

To address the high rock strength and low drilling rate issues in deep oil/gas and geothermal exploitation, we performed mechanical property tests on three kinds of rock samples (granite, shale and sandstone) subjected to liquid nitrogen (LN2) cooling and conducted rock-breaking experiments using LN2 jet. Rock-breaking characteristics and mechanisms of LN2 jet, heat transfer features between LN2 and rock and thermal stress evolution in rock were analyzed. A novel high-pressure LN2 jet assisted drilling method was proposed accordingly. The study results show that LN2 thermal shock can significantly reduce uniaxial compression strength and elastic modulus of rock. Rock damage and corresponding mechanical deterioration become more pronounced with increasing rock temperature. The LN2 jet has merits of high rock-breaking efficiency and low threshold rock-breaking pressure. Rock failure under LN2 jet impact is characterized by large volume breakage and the rock-breaking performance becomes more significant with increase of rock temperature. Under the impact of LN2 jet, the damage of granite is the most remarkable among the three rock samples. Thus, this method works better for high temperature granite formations. It has a good application prospect in speeding up drilling rate in deep hot dry rock geothermal reservoirs.