the warm glow of geothermal

In the lower mainland of British Columbia, Canada, a region known for its adoption of alternative energy sources, the call that came into Sonic Drilling Ltd.’s office was a typical one.  On the other end of the line was a rival drilling company asking for help in completing a geothermal project on time.

“In this case, it was a greenhouse nursery where the competitor’s rig had only been able to drill about 50 feet in two weeks,” says Bill Fitzgerald , general manager for Sonic Drilling Ltd, a contracting company based in the Vancouver area with a fleet of sonic rigs supplied by the Sonic Drill Corporation.

“They had hit lots of mixed sand, clay and gravel,” explained Fitzgerald.  “It’s hard sometimes for people to understand that we can just buzz right through all that.”

Indeed, the skeptics often shake their heads disbelievingly when confronted with the evidence of a sonic rig in action. In a recent example, Fitzgerald recounts a geothermal installation that one of his rigs assisted on – helping to finish a library/classroom addition for the Langara community college in Vancouver – a project that subsequently won an award for sustainable construction.  In the Langara case history, three standard rigs had been working the site for nearly two months and, in that time period, they had succeeded in drilling 18 holes in total.

“It was a driller’s nightmare,” says Fitzgerald.  “It was a little tough, even for us.”

Under the Langara site, the soil was a diverse mixture of sand, till and gravel and littered with large boulders – daunting terrain no matter what kind of rig worked it.  Despite the soil conditions, a single sonic rig was able to drill, case, loop and grout 23 geothermal holes in two weeks flat.  It was a stunning result given that it had taken three traditional rigs nearly two months to accomplish less than it took the sonic rig to complete in two weeks.

“You can imagine how happy they were to see us do that,” says Fitzgerald, with a grin.

With speed like that, it’s clear to see that the costs per foot/metre when using a sonic rig translate into significant savings and it’s just as easy to see how Fitzgerald can claim that the sonic is actually cheaper in many applications than its traditional counterpart. With a reputation for being the fastest drill in town, sonic rigs are now boring their way through Europe, Asia, North America, South America, Africa and the UK.

So how did sonic drilling technology become so popular and, perhaps more interestingly, who invented this rig anyway? The short answer to the first question is, quite simply, that it’s the right tool for the job and, in many cases, it’s the only tool for the job.  The second question, however, deserves a slightly longer answer.

The history of sonic drilling technology is actually a story about the efforts of many but it is Ray Roussy, president of Sonic Drill Corporation and Sonic Drilling Ltd, who can clearly lay claim to the prize of improving the technology to the point that he could patent his improvements and commercialize a sonic drill that is both reliable and field tested.

Although the roots of sonic drilling technology can be traced back to the work of George Constantinesco, a Romanian intellectual who immigrated to England in 1910 and published his “Theory of Sonics,” it would take many more years of research by the likes of Romanian engineer Dr. Ion Basgan, American inventor Albert Bodine (funded by Shell Oil) and engineers at the British-owned Hawker-Siddeley before a viable drill was created.

As one of those original engineers at Hawker-Siddeley, Roussy made the life-altering decision to pick up the torch of sonic drill research and development when the aircraft company experienced a downturn in the 1980’s and dropped the sonic project. Today, after 27 years of field testing and development, Roussy has not only patented his super-performing drill but he has succeeded in commercializing the vision of a man 100 years earlier.

How pleased Constantinesco would have been to see the Roussy sonic drill in action today; boring 3-10 times faster (depending on soil conditions) without using any drilling mud and able to provide continuous core samples to depths of more than 300 ft (100 meters). It's amazing Canadian technology that keeps converting skeptics into believers – a fact that Roussy hopes will eventually revolutionize the drilling world, one geothermal loop at a time.