On November 20th, the evaluation conference of the system and coring technology of the “Hainiu” deep-sea drilling rig developed by Professor Wan Buyan and his team of HNUST, was held in Beijing. At the meeting, Professor Wan announced that the new generation of “Hainiu” has taken great improvements: Water Depth more 3,000 meters and Maximum Drilling Capacity up to 90 meters, an increase of 30 meters over the previous one. In addition, the equipment has made new breakthroughs in coring technology, average coring rate, operational efficiency and so on, reaching the international advanced level.
In 2005, “Hainiu”, a 60-meter multi-purpose drilling rig developed by Professor Wan’s team, was successfully tested in the deep South China Sea, being the first to drill the seabed for 60 meters at a depth of more than 3,000 meters in China, which marked that China had the capability of deep-sea seabed sampling, and it was the fourth country to master this technology after the United States, Germany and Australia.
“This hard-won achievement is sophisticated, and relies on mature and reliable technology. Besides, it has proprietary intellectual property right, which is applied successfully.” The evaluation committee agreed that the tech-breakthrough made by the new “Hainiu” has brought obvious advantages: efficiently improved safety and reliability of deck operation; compared with similar international deep-sea drilling ship projects, the exploration cost of “Hainiu” can be reduced by more than 90% and the efficiency can be increased by 6-8 times; in comparison with similar deck operation system of submarine drilling rig, it can be applied to smaller mother ship, and the operating cost will be greatly reduced.
“This property has obtained 10 invention patents, 15 utility model patents, 1 design patent and 3 software Copyrights.” Wan said.“Hainiu 2”, with design of drilling depth up to 230 meters and the pressure function, is under development.
(Translated by Song Dan)
