Jökull


Jökull - 01.12.2007, Side 81

Jökull - 01.12.2007, Side 81
A hot water drill with built-in sterilization Figure 4. Calculated decrease in drilling water tem- perature with depth. The measured mass flow rate of 450 l/hr is assumed. – Reiknað hitafall í borslöngu með dýpi. Gert er ráð fyrir að vatnsmagnið 450 l/klst streymi út um spjótið. Figure 5. Calculated borehole diameter as a func- tion of depth, for three different values of the drilling speed. – Reiknað þvermál borholu sem fall af dýpi, fyrir þrjá mismunandi borhraða. For the fastest drilling rate (60 m/hr), the calcu- lations suggest a hole diameter of 6.6 cm at 300 m depth, but at 600 m depth the available heat energy only suffices to melt a hole with a diameter equal to the diameter of the drill stem (4 cm). At 300 m depth, the two other curves shown in Figure 5 indicate a borehole diameter of 9.3 cm and 14.7 cm for drilling rates of v=30 m/hr and v=12 m/hr, respectively. For reasons mentioned above, these are minimum diame- ters, and in addition the operator will normally slow the drilling speed with depth, which will contribute to the production of a larger hole diameter. SUMMARY AND OUTLOOK A hot water drilling system with built-in sterilization has been built and tested with success on a temper- ate ice cap. The meltwater used for drilling is filtered, exposed to UV-radiation and heated to high tempera- tures in order to minimize the risk of biological con- tamination. Filtering of the drilling water prevents larger particles from entering the high pressure pump; a valid concern for drilling in regions where the snow is likely to contain windblown dust and deposits from nearby volcanoes. The filter pore-size used in the tests (50 µm) will, however, not block individual microbes or small dust particles from passing through the sys- tem. All three tests conducted with the new system indicate that the UV water treatment system is very effective in reducing the number of viable cells in the meltwater. Some microorganisms do survive the UV radiation in the tests, probably because the exposure time was not long enough. Analysis of samples col- lected during a test on the Langjökull ice cap indi- cated a significant drop in the number of viable cells when the drilling water was heated to 95!C. Reduc- tion to undetectable levels of microbial colony form- ing units was achieved in later tests by running the meltwater heater at maximum temperature and clean- ing with 70% ethanol. Some limitations are inherent in the laboratory methods used to investigate samples from the drilling system. The 0.45 µm filters are not likely to collect all bacterial cells and the plate count agar (PCA) used for cultivation is a high organic content medium on which cells that survive in oligotrophic (nutrient-poor) en- JÖKULL No. 57 79
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