Review on trona solution mining with intersected well sets in Turkey

Abstract:

Turkey is the first country to extract trona deposit commercially with intersected well sets. The core technology which is employed to make underground connection of the well sets for brine recovery is the intersected well drilling and mining technology developed by China. Compared with conventional tunnel mining, mining with the intersection well sets provide lots of advantages such as less labour intensity, reduced labour cost, environmentsoundness without discharge of tailings. In the past tenodd years, with support of the intersected well drilling technology, China has participated extensively in test and commercial production of trona resources, and made continuous improvement on the mining well set design, orientation tools, BHAs, survey tools; in particular, great achievement has been made in development and application of the magnetic ranging system, with the 4th generation “SmartMag” ranging tool launched into market; meanwhile, the threewell set mining mode has been desgined and implemented. On one hand, intersected well drilling and mining technology has driven the extensive exploitation of trona resources in Turkey to elevate it to a major player in the world soda ash industry; on the other hand, intersected well drilling and mining technology has advanced itself through intensive field application, lifting it to a higher level.

Key words:trona mine; solution mining; horizontal well; intersected well set; threewell set; SmartMag ranging system; directional drilling; Turkey