OREANDA-NEWS. Degassing and Methane Utilization Administration (UDiUM) at SUEK-Kuzbass has brought two Sandvik DE-880 drill rigs into operation. The rigs are designed for degassing and geotechnical drilling with up to 500 m depth capacity and 244 mm bottom diameter of a drilled hole.

The equipment of this type is used in Russia for the first time. The machinery is highly productive, reliable, mobile (truck-mounted) and versatile. Sandvik DE-880 rigs use various drilling techniques: auger drilling, rotary drilling, rotary percussion drilling (using a down-the-hole hammer and compressed air or drilling fluid as flushing agent to remove debris from the hole, complete with a high pressure compressor).

Sandvik DE-880 drill rigs were purchased under the "SUEK-Kuzbass Mines Methane Degassing" investment project. Each rig costs over 180 mln rubles. A drilling plan per Sandvik DE-880 rig targets more than 10 km a year, which should eventually put an end to using services of contractors related to drilling degassing holes from daytime surface. Currently, the average distance of degassing holes drilled from the surface is 55 km per year across the Company, the average distance of degassing holes in underground mines is over 200 km per year.

Coal seams degassing considerably increases safety of coal-face operations. There is also a large-scale project under way to utilize extracted methane. In 4.5 years the operation has utilized 19,714,000 m3 of methane or 297,000 tonnes of СО2 equivalent, generated 36,605 MWh of electric power and 25,971.63 Gcal of thermal energy.