Drilling at the Bochum D2GRIDS pilot site
D2Grids Project
Preparations for drilling at Mark 51°7 in Bochum! What is Mark 51°7? Built on the ancient site of an Opel car plant and former Dannenbaum coal mine, it is one of the pilot sites of the Interreg project D2Grids, which aims to develop the 5th generation of district heating and cooling.
Mine water from the former coal mine will soon supply the site with renewable heating and cooling. For this purpose, two boreholes have to be sunk in order to tap and extract the mine water from depths of about 800m and 300m respectively. At the moment, the preparations for the drillings are in the decisive phase. This October, the company Daldrup & Söhne AG from Ascheberg will start the drilling work.
The heating and cooling network of the 5th generation is just one building block for the sustainable design of the Mark 51°7 site. "At MARK 51°7, we offer our investors the best possible infrastructures combined with convincing services. In addition to efficient and sustainable cooling/heating networks and fast data infrastructure, we also offer solutions for the mobility of the future ; of course including modern charging structure for electric vehicles or e-bikes," emphasises Ralf Meyer Managing Director of Bochum Perspektive 2022 GmbH.
The drilling will begin this October. To this effect, extensive preparatory work had to be done. Since the end of August, preparations have been underway on the site to prepare it for the drilling rig - a "Wirth B 4A" drilling rig with a mast height of around 18 metres and a pull-back force of up to 720 kilonewtons (kN).
The most important task was the construction of the two 3.40 by 3.40 metre large and 6 meters deep drilling cellars in which the standpipe was already inserted. The drilling cellars are the two above-ground starting points for the boreholes, which then reach their destination underground using directional drilling technology.
However, the drilling cellar is not only the central point for drilling, but also part of the safety concept for the drilling work. In it, for example, excess mud or cement suspensions for the grouting can be collected in a controlled manner.
Last but not least, the entire drilling site was prepared in such a way that the drilling rig and all ancillary equipment can now be delivered, set up and made ready for start-up.
With the completion of the drilling site and the start of the actual drilling in October, the Bochum partners - Stadtwerke Bochum Holding, FUW GmbH and Fraunhofer IEG, have completed the next step to establish a 5GDHC grid at the pilot site.
Dietmar Spohn, CEO of Stadtwerke Bochum, explains that "the energy concept developed for MARK 51°7 stands out from the development of comparable industrial sites primarily because of its innovative heating and cooling supply, as a 5th generation heating and cooling grid, one of the pilot site demonstrators. With the planned use of the geothermal energy source, we are creating the basis for a high ecological standard on the site".
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