Waterjetting 32d - Cutting with polymer in the water

In the recent past I have written about the use of polymers in high-pressure jets and that they can significantly improve jetting performance, with no additional changes in the power or pump and equipment used in the work. This is because of two different effects that the polymers have. Firstly they reduce turbulence in the flow from the pump to the nozzle, reducing pressure loss and increasing fluid flow, for the same pump power. As a practical consequence since the fluid flow will be greater for the same pump pressure, this will require that a larger orifice diameter be used to handle the greater, or – for the same flow rate and nozzle diameter, the pump can be operated at a lower pressure.

Figure 1. Comparison between a conventional jet and one containing the polymer additive marketed as SUPERWATER. (after Glenn Howells)

This is not immediately apparent, since the jet carrying the polymer appears smaller, but this is due to the second effect of the polymer, which is to tend to glue the water together, so that it is not dispersed as easily by the surrounding fluid – air in this case. In fact, for the same pump pressure and orifice diameter the lower jet will be operating at a higher pressure (since there is less pressure loss in the line) and there will be more water coming out of the polymer-supplied orifice at a higher velocity. But because it is not spreading into the air, it appears smaller.

This will improve the cohesion of the jet as it moves away from the jet, and as noted in an earlier post, this means that the jet will cut to a greater range from the jet, since it maintains the required critical pressure further.

The impact that the more coherent jet has on performance can be seen where the jet is used to cut into two different types of limestone, one oolitic and one crystalline.

Figure 3. Depths of cut of the polymer-containing jet (left) and plain waterjet, operating at the same pump pressure, nozzle diameter and standoff distance (Glenn Howells)

Note that at the distance where the normal waterjet has broken into droplets (as seen by the nature of the cut surface) and the jet has barely enough energy to remove the surface layer, where the jet contains polymer it retains the ability to cut.

Further, and this is more critical where cut quality is more important, the jet cut is much straighter and cleaner than the dispersed and wider normal cut. This can be seen where a different, more crystalline limestone has been cut closer to the nozzle.

Figure 4. Change in the cut shape to a narrower, deeper cut where polymer is added to the jet stream (rhs)in cutting limestone. (after Glenn Howells)

The benefit of the improved performance changes therefore with the distance of the target from the nozzle, with the more dramatic improvement being seen as the target gets further from the nozzle. Looking at the data from the original work that we did in Leeds, back in the early days of this study, this can perhaps be better realized through the use of a 3-D plot.

Figure 5. Improvement in cutting performance as a function of distance from the nozzle and jet pressure.

Note that, in these trials, the polymer improved the jet performance relatively more at lower pressures and greater standoff distance. Part of the reason for this (in hindsight close to 50-years after running the tests) is that when the jet was cutting at the lower pressures it was closer to the threshold pressure of the rock and this any drop in jet pressure had a more significant impact on cut depth than occurred at the higher pressures, where the gain was not relative to such a low benchmark.

For a number of years, until our research took us into fields where use of the polymer was precluded for several reasons, we routinely used a polymer (generally Superwater, marketed by Berkeley Chemical) rather than Polyox because it gave a relatively consistent and significant improvement in performance plus, being a liquid, it was relatively simple and inexpensive to buy a small metering unit (about the size of a small case) which would feed the polymer into the water supply line to the pump at the required concentration – typically 0.1 to 0.3%.

It tends to work better in improving abrasive jet cutting when it is used with a Direct Injection of Abrasive (DIAjet) or Abrasive Slurry Jet (ASJ) system than with conventional abrasive waterjet (AWJ) systems. The reason for this is that the AWJ system has the abrasive fed into the water stream at the mixing chamber just before the jet leaves the nozzle to strike the target. Within the mixing chamber the abrasive has to penetrate into the waterjet stream in order to acquire the jet velocity, and to distribute across the jet and give an even cut on the target.

Where the abrasive is feeding in from one side of the jet and the waterjet stream is more coherent, it becomes more difficult for the abrasive to penetrate the stream, and if the design is not adjusted accordingly, the cutting performance can be diminished, particularly relative to the gain that can be achieved where the combination is carried out effectively.

On the other hand with the ASJ systems the abrasive is mixed with the water far upstream of the nozzle and the are already thoroughly mixed together, so that the added cohesion of the jet will help to provide the acceleration that the particles need to reach close to the waterjet velocity, and achieve the improved cutting performance required.

Where an ultrahigh pressure jet does not contain abrasive, the polymer can be of benefit as a means of improving cut quality – as evidenced from this comparison in cutting a shoe sole pattern, both with and without the Superwater polymer.

Figure 6. Shoe sole cut comparison with and without Superwater. Note the smoother cut, with less fraying of the back side of the cut with the polymer. (after Glenn Howells)

Waterjetting 27d: Drilling at a fixed diameter

In the last post I described how we initially came up with a simple design for drilling through material, using an axially aligned jet and a larger jet offset to one side at an optimal angle of around 20 degrees.

One of the problems with the use of this design is that the outer jet has to remove all the material in front of the nozzle during the time that it rotates around and advances the distance of the incremental feed rate. If it does not then there is a significant problem. Consider the case where the drill penetrates through a layer of limestone, while drilling otherwise in sandstone.

Figure 1. Sectioned waterjet drilled hole through a sandstone:limestone:sandstone sandwich of rock.

Note that although the hole does not deviate as it goes through the harder material since, unlike conventional drills, there is no mechanical contact between the high-angled rock and the nozzle assembly. But the hole reduces in size. If the hole reduces in size below the diameter of the nozzle holder, this will not contact the rock until it has passed behind the plane of the reaming jet. In other words the only way the blocking rock can be removed is to back the nozzle along the hole so that the reaming jet can hit the material blocking progress.

Figure 2. Drill passage blocked by protruding rock in the path of the nozzle body, but behind the cutting plane of the inclined jet.

One way to ensure that this is not a problem is to advance the drill at a slower rate, with the rate of penetration controlled by the ability to cut the hardest rock that the drill will pass through. The problem with that approach, and concurrently that of setting a fixed advance rate, is that, at the same advance rate and rotation speed, the drill will drill through different rocks at a different diameter. While this can be an advantage, in a limited number of cases that I will discuss in a later post, in most cases it is better if the hole is at a relatively constant diameter.

So how can we solve this problem?

One approach taken in Australia was to change the design and location of the cutting jets. Rather than have a single jet cutting out to the perimeter of the hole, two jets were used, but crossed over the axis and cut on the opposite side to their location. This had an additional advantage over the initial design in that, when drilling longer holes (and this went on to drill horizontal holes that ranged up to a kilometer in length IIRC) the head was balanced and so did not wobble and get out of alignment because of the force imbalance.

To overcome the problem of drilling at too small a diameter additional reaming jets were placed on the front of the nozzle assembly, so that he hole would be reamed to the diameter needed to allow the support hose access.

Figure 3. The addition of a pair of reaming jets. Note that offsetting the two front nozzles will also allow them to put a torque on the front part of the nozzle, which can therefore be self-rotating from the left hand of arrow A forward.

But the problem is not completely solved with these changes, since should any rock protrude into the hole in the distance A, so that it hits the larger diameter that follows, again it is not possible for the reaming jets to cut this rock without backing up the drill.

There is another problem, in drilling horizontal holes where the hole diameter can vary. Consider that if the drill goes into a softer material then, at constant advance (ROP), the hole diameter becomes larger. As the drill moves over this larger hole it will be riding on the floor of the hole, and thus the front of the drill will tip forward into the floor of the larger hole. This will incline the drill downwards, and so the hole will no longer be of constant alignment, but rather will gradually, over distance, tip increasingly downwards.

It is therefore critical that the hole be drilled at a relatively constant diameter (allowing for some hole roughness). How to achieve this? The answer is to put a gaging ring or collar of the required hole diameter, in the cutting plane of the rotating jets.

Figure 4. The use of a collar at the front of the nozzle to ensure the hole is cut to the right diameter.

It itself this isn’t sufficient to give the hole a constant diameter, since there is still the problem of drilling through materials of differing resistance. To overcome that problem we put a spring at the back of the drill, with a contact switch to a valve on the feed to the hydraulic motor powering the drill advance. Thus the drill would start to rotate, and the motor would increase the speed of advance until the collar bumped up against the rock. At that time the spring would compress, the contact switch would close, and the advance would momentarily stop. The drill would rotate around and remove the obstructing rock, the spring would expand opening the flow to the motor, and the drill would move forward. It may sound as though it would be a stuttering advance, but when we tried it in a mine you couldn’t tell that the mechanism was working, apart from the hole being of constant diameter, and by watching the spring. It drilled at between 7 and 12 ft a minute in an aggressive sandstone.

Figure 5. The drill assembly used underground. The hydraulic advance motor (it pulls the drill forward using the chain drive) can be seen under the drill sash (the red and grey bar – painted in 1 ft intervals).

In a normal drilling operation when a drill intersects a previously drilled hole at a shallow angle, then the second drill will follow the path of the first hole, and cannot drill through the opposing wall at that shallow angle. (We know this from experience having broken two drill steels trying while excavating the OmniMax Theater under the Arch in St. Louis). But with the waterjet drill we were able to make to second drill cross the intersection.

Figure 6. Photo down one drill hole, showing the point where the hole intersected a second, and crossed without deviation.

Hopefully there is now enough background so that next time I can talk a little more about the effects of borehole pressure on drilling performance.

Waterjetting 27c - Drilling nozzle design

In discussing how stress affects the ability of waterjets to drill rock, I have discussed the effect of the stress in the ground on drill performance, but before discussing the effect of the borehole pressure it is perhaps best to spend this post talking about the simplest drill bit design.

The diameter of the first jets we used to cut into rock were about 0.04 inches in size, with the nozzle holder used to hold the nozzle on the end of the supply pipe being at around an inch in diameter. As a result, if the jet was to cut a path into the rock, it would have to rotate around the face of the rock ahead of it, removing all the rock ahead of the assembly, and allowing the head to advance.

Figure 1. Original concept of a waterjet drill used to penetrate sandstone.

Of course, back when we first did this in the 1960’s the swivels weren’t available to allow us to rotate the high pressure line, and so we rotated the rock samples instead.

Figure 2. First holes drilled at the University of Leeds. Note the central cone.

Because the jet had to penetrate across the diameter of the hole, so as to remove the cone ahead of the tool, and since the jet would only cut around 2.5 times the jet diameter in width at any one time, the rate that the head could move forward was limited to a maximum of 0.1 x rotation speed (rpm) in inches/minute. And, because the rotation speed controlled the depth which the jet cut into the rock, the rpm had to be kept down to ensure that the jet cut to the full required diameter on each pass. The top speed we could achieve, even in relatively soft sandstone, was around 4 inches a minute.

One of those fortunate accidents that sometimes befalls research folk then occurred. I had asked Jim Blaine, our machinist, to make a new design, with one jet pointing forward and one off to the side, intending that the two be offset. However, due to a misunderstanding, he drilled the second, smaller hole along the jet axis, while offsetting the angled jet to cut further out from the diameter. Since the nozzle was built we proceeded to try it.

Figure 3. First dual jet nozzle design.

Because the axial jet removed the central core, we could offset the inclined jet so that it needed to cut a shorter distance in order to reach the required gage for the hole. That meant that we could rotate the nozzle faster, which in turn meant a faster drilling speed, much faster.

Figure 4. Hole diameter as a function of rate of penetration of the drill (in meters/minute), for two outer jet angles, and two rotation speeds.

Note that in the above figure, with a 30 degree outer jet, spinning at 970 rpm we were able to drill a hole at a speed of roughly 280 inches/minute instead of the previous 4 inches/min by adding only 25% more water to the bit with the second orifice.

As mentioned above, the limit on the advance rate was the depth which the jet cut into the wall, and the amount of rib between adjacent passes that the jet cut would leave.

Figure 5. An early hole drilled into Berea sandstone, at a slow advance rate, using a 10 ksi jet pressure.

Figure 6. Hole drilled into Berea sandstone at 970 rpm, 225 ipm advance rate, with a 15-degree inclined jet. Note that the hole perimeter has the equivalent of a thread cut into it.

It is pertinent to make a small observation over the advantage of that slightly roughened outer wall to the borehole. One of the ways in which miners hold up the roof while they are working underground, is to insert rods (known as roofbolts or rockbolts) into drilled holes placed in the surrounding rock. To improve the grip between these bolts and the wall, miners will also often insert packages of glue into the hole to fill the gap between the bolts and the rock wall.

Unfortunately when the hole is drilled with a conventional mechanical drilling bit, the walls of the hole are left relatively smooth. This means that the bolt has a poorer grip on the wall, and is more easily pulled out of the hole. The US Bureau of Mines ran anchorage tests for different rock wall finishes.

Figure 7. Effect of hole roughness on the anchor strength (US Bureau of Mines)

Conventionally a larger hole, with greater bearing surface, would give a stronger anchorage. This is shown by the greater load carried by the hole drilled with the 1-3/8th bit, over that drilled by the 1-1/4 inch bit. But both of these were smooth walled, and the bit drilled at 1-inch, with a roughened wall had almost three-times the pull strength even though of smaller size.

The roughness of the hole can be controlled by adjusting the feed rate, relative to the rotation speed, both as a function of the jet pressure, nozzle diameter and outer jet angle. It turned out, through experiment, that the optimal angle for the jet was at around 22.5-degrees, depending on the type of rock in which the drill was working.

The effect of rock properties plays a very significant role in the performance of the drill. And it was very easy, early in the program, to show that the important rock parameter was not the compressive strength of the material. To show this we drilled through prepared samples of an Indiana limestone and a sandstone, both of which had approximately the same (uniaxial) compressive strength. The advance rate was kept constant, as was the rotation speed, as the drill penetrated from one rock into the other, and then the hole was cut in half (as were the samples shown above).

Figure 8. Hole drilled from limestone into sandstone.

Although the hole maintained alignment, drilling straight forward through the steep interface between the two rocks (a problem with some conventional drills) the hole diameter changed dramatically.

How we changed the design to maintain hole diameter, and, at the same time, adjusted for changing borehole depth will be discussed next time.

Waterjetting 12b - Jet Assisted Mechanical Rock Cutting

Whenever material is cut using a conventional mechanical tool then heat is generated in the process. High-pressure waterjets can dramatically change this process, with considerable benefit. However, to explain some of the reasons requires a somewhat lengthy explanation. Which is why this topic is stretched over a number of posts.

In the last post I discussed how the heat generated proved to be a problem in the mechanical cutting of hard rock, where dragging a cutting tool across the surface caused a rapid temperature rise, to the point that the carbide began to melt.

Figure 1. New and used bit (Dr. Hood's Dissertation)

However, when the process was stopped before the bit was entirely eaten away, Mike discovered that the bit was not melting from the front, with all the flow of material dragging back under the bit. Rather the heat (which I profiled last time) was causing the bit to deform, so that it initially pushed the front of the bit slightly forward. This is visible in the bit and sketch of the location on the rock shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Deformation of the bit, as it starts to heat (Dr. Hood’s Dissertation)

Now why is this? Well the bit is being pushed into the rock so hard, in order to penetrate some 2/10ths of an inch or so that it is crushing the rock under the bit. But the process of breaking that rock occurs in stages. As the bit first starts to penetrate it cracks the rock, with cracks a little apart, but these intersect and break out pieces of rock, that can’t escape (being surrounded by rock and the bit). So the rock is crushed into very fine particles, which are then re-compacted and tightly fill all the space under the bit. I can show this with a picture from some experiments that Richard Gertsch carried out as part of his doctorate, at Missouri S&T.

Figure 3. Crushed rock under a cutting tool, the rock is basalt, and the white lines within the grey rock are the pulverized particles after the indentation. (Dr. Gertsch's Dissertation).

There are two things that a pair of high pressure jets of water can achieve if they are pointed at the bit:rock interface. But they have to hit at the point where the bit is breaking the rock. (And later work showed that they had to be within 3 mm – 1/8th of an inch – of hitting that point otherwise they won’t work).

Figure 4. Optimized location of the jets on the cutting tool. (Dr Hood's Dissertation)

The first, and anticipated advantage was that it would cool the bit, so that it would stay sharp. But the jets did more. If that jet (at a pressure of 10,000 psi) were played on the rock, after it had been crushed and re-compacted, then it would only be able to remove a small fraction of the crushed material, which would still resist the bit cutting.

Figure 5. Rock after indentation, with a jet cutting into the crushed material after it is crushed and re-compacted. (Dr. Gertsch's Dissertation)

But consider the case where the jet is playing onto the rock as those first cracks are made and the rock is still in larger pieces. The jet has enough energy to push that out of the way of the bit, and remove it all, as it is broken loose, without it being crushed to powder and without re-compaction. The jet thus cleans out the path ahead of the bit, so that it can penetrate deeper into the rock, at a lower force, as I showed in the force diagrams last time.

Figure 6. Rock cut with a tool that has jets playing on the face as the bit penetrates. (Note there is no crushed material and the cracks are flushed open and easy to grow much deeper into the rock). (Dr. Gertsch's Dissertation)

It is very important to understand, however, that it is the combined simultaneous action of the bit in breaking the rock, and the water in immediately flushing away the chips and keeping the bit cool that makes this work. And for that to happen the two processes have to occur at the same place. Placing the jet 1/3rd of an inch from the cutting face is too far. And this was sadly not understood by a number of those who studies the process around the world. However, in the UK, the Safety in Mines Research Establishment put a high-pressure pump on a tunneling machine.

The only underground mine that they could test it in was a limestone mine, and the machine they had available was only 25 tons and could not cut the limestone, so they built an artificial rock face out of sandstone to demonstrate that the idea would work. Problem was that they had so many visitors that they ran out of the demonstration rock.

Someone tried it on the mine limestone. Without the jets the head bounced around without cutting the rock. With the jets on it cut into the rock, so well that the mine asked that it be left there until it had drilled a tunnel for them.

Figure 7. Waterjet assisted road-header at the Middleton Mine in the UK.

The technology went on into commercial development, but a change in bit design from the flat cutters where the jets could reach the cutting zone, to a double conic pointed bit where it could not (easily) meant that the technology fell into abeyance, although investigators in Russia and ourselves developed some answers.

And so, from the cutting of the rock, we learned that when high-pressure waterjets were played into the crushing zone under a cutting bit, that they cooled the bit and removed the broken rock as it was produced. Thus a 25-ton machine (cost at the time $125,000) with a jet assist (say another $75,000) could outperform a 125-ton machine (cost $675,000) which did not have the assist. And as an incidental advantage since the rock is not totally crushed under the bit any longer, there is no respirable dust generated. But the way in which it worked would not work in cutting metal, where there shouldn’t therefore be the same advantage – yes?

Well actually no! When Dr. Marian Mazurkiewicz added waterjets to the cutting tool in a metal cutting operation in a machine shop, he found many of the same benefits. But we’ll talk about that, next time.

Carbonates, chalk and oilfield subsidence

This is a part of the continuing series of technical talks that I post on Sundays, and which are listed on the right side of the page. Gradually these are getting a little more technical, so I would suggest if you are new to these that you start at the beginning and work your way up.

Having just written about sandstones and permeability, and then about water flooding, I want to go on, this time to talk about carbonate rocks, as the general topic and secondary porosity, with some comments at the end on formations in chalk and the problems that this can bring to places such as Ekofisk. (Added for clarity - when I talk about carbonates I mean calcium carbonate and the related rocks such as limestone, chalk and dolomite, to name but three). I again want to emphasize that, life being what it is, the true situation is often a bit more complex than I describe in this simplistic overview, and that I am very grateful when folk give more specific information about some of their experiences in the field.

When I wrote about sandstones, I mentioned that (as a general rule) carbonates are different to the conditions found with sandstone. For a start the rock itself is much finer grained than a typical sandstone. Even if there were oil in the body of the rock it would be more difficult to get out. Most of the oil is found in what is called secondary porosity. This is the network of fractures and bedding planes that are formed in the rock as it is compressed and moved after it has first been formed. The rock is largely limestone, though it may also be dolomite or related rocks. The rock is usually not a massive, solid rock (such as you might want to build a house or cathedral with).

Exposed limestone

Rather oil will collect where there are spaces in the rock. These can be where there was a coral reef, or a lot of change in rock structure. You can see that sort of thing in some new road cuts

such as this one.

It is easier to explain some of the problems of getting the oil out, if one looks at a road cut that has weathered a bit

Weathered rock wall

You can see how the passage of water has opened the joints and dissolved small holes (or vugs) in the rock. These provide the spaces in the rock into which the oil can move and collect and be trapped. Perhaps it might be easier if I used a simpler sketch of a section through the rock to make the next point.

Section through a fractured rock, showing how the oil is in fractures that the well does not reach.

With the oil painted green, as it fills one crack system, but not them all, the well is just a little bit too far to the left to tap into the major fissure system and get all the oil. If only we could reach out a few feet and hit those cracks! And we can and do.

This is part of the reason that we send down the small explosive shaped charges that not only penetrate through the well case and the concrete, but also extend a hole out into the rock. By driving these perforations out into the crack system in the rock a path can be created from the oil-filled cracks to the well. Those cracks can also be cleaned up a bit (since they often have very small particles of carbonate filling them in the zone around the well) by having an acid pumped down into the completion zone. This acid will also open up some of the finer fissures in the rock so that a free path will develop from the well to the oil-filled cracks.

And so we can begin to produce oil. However after a while, for one of several reasons, the flow from the well will begin to decline. I mentioned last time that the underlying reason will be that the pressure in the reservoir will drop as the oil is withdrawn. But there are other reasons.

If the oil is removed too quickly we can generate, before we need to, a gas cap in the well. Fine rock can be carried through the cracks towards the well, and block the passages. Some of the oil contents, such as the waxes, can settle out of the oil, and fill the holes in the well casing. As the oil flows to the well, underlying water can follow it and cut-off blocks of oil in the rock. And the pressure difference between the oil further away from the well, and the well itself might not be enough to move that more distant oil towards the well. (Are you really sure you want to make this investment ?)

Before I leave Carbonates let me go back to the other kind, where there is a reasonable amount of primary porosity, and where the oil is spread through the rock. This can happen when, for example, the rock is a chalk (another form of calcium carbonate or limestone).

Chalk, somewhat similar to that in which the oil at Ekofisk is found

Chalk poses some different problems in production. Let me illustrate them with an abbreviated history of the Ekofisk field. The field was found in 1969, and started production in 1971. It produced from a fractured chalk that has “high porosity but low permeability.” When it was originally produced the driving force to move the oil to the wells was through pressure depletion of the oil, and in this way they were able to recover between 17 and 18% of the oil in place. In the process, however, there was a relatively unexpected problem.

To explain it let me make a very very simple illustrative example.

Representation of Oil (grey) filling pores in a rock.

Now in the original condition the pressure of the oil in the pores (holes) in the rock above is equal to a significant portion of the the pressure of the overlying rock. At Ekofisk the pore pressure was 7,135 psia at a depth of 10,400 ft. Porosity can be as high as 48%.

But as the oil is drawn off through the well that pressure reduces, and the load transfers to the rock columns that are one either side of the circular pores. (The well pressure was reduced to below 5,000 psi). When the load on these columns becomes higher than the strength of the rock then the pillars will collapse. This helps a little to squeeze some of the oil out, but it also (when it happens over a large enough volume) compresses the entire volume of the rock holding the oil. This can close some of the passage ways to the well (permeability), and make it harder to get the oil out, though that does not appear to have happened. But it also lowers the sea bed, on which some of the recovery oil platforms were standing. That subsidence has been up to 30 ft in places. (The platforms were elevated in 1987) but new platforms were ultimately required that would allow a subsidence of up to 66 ft. (20 meters).

In order to stop the collapse, and also to increase the flow of oil to the wells, a program using water injection at pressure was started in 1987, by injecting 820,000 barrels of water a day, it was anticipated that the field would allow the recovery of about 36% of the oil, and provide an additional 300 million barrels of oil. Current estimates are that it will increase overall recovery to 50% of the oil in place.

There are, however, now some concerns about the dissolution of some of the chalk by the water that is being used for the injection, weakening it further, One of the problems in analysis, as it turns out, has been in disregarding the temperatures at which the extraction is occurring. (For those who go to the reference the exchange rate is roughly 5 kr to the dollar).

From which you will see that there is still lots to talk about. But, as before, if I have glossed over stuff, just ask a question and I (or others who contribute) will be glad to give an answer.