Developing an Automated Drill Cutting Sample Collection and Analysis System

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The Southern Alberta Institute of Technology (SAIT) and XRF Solutions Ltd. propose a multi-year collaboration which will advance the company's initial development and design of a novel device capable of screening, washing, drying, analyzing and labeling drill cutting samples automatically. The company-specific problem to be addressed by this collaboration is the variable quality and resolution of cuttings that are now manually collected during drilling. Manual collection of cuttings introduces significant error into the measurements made by the company and is too slow for 'measure while drilling' delivery of X-ray florescence data. An automated drill cutting sample collection and analysis system that incorporates an X-ray fluorescence analyzer would allow XRF Solutions to provide up to 70 measured elements live while drilling, to aid in geo-steering horizontal oil and gas wells. The proposed project will follow a collaboration currently underway funded by the company and an NSERC Engage grant, to develop a baseline design and preliminary plan for the automated system. The proposed project will develop a prototype system that will be tested in the lab and the field during the project, and subsequently pilot-tested in select locations. The projects will benefit from state of the art expertise and infrastructure available in two research areas in the Applied Research and Innovation Services (ARIS) department at SAIT: the Design, Fabrication and Testing (DFT) group, and the Centre for Innovative Information Technology Solution (CIITS).