Water Boreholes

Specialised in the design and manufacture of robotic systems, ECA Group produces innovative and high tech solutions for the inspection, measurement  & control inside non visitable wells.

On one side, ECA Group provides solutions for ground water wells which are  the main source of water within dry countries and a significant contribution to this sourcing in all other countries.

These wells have an internal diameter ranging from 2’’ to 20’’, and their depth varies from several hundreds to few thousands meters, depending on the location of the ground water source ; they are most of the time cased (if not, called ‘’open holes’’) ; when reaching the aquifer, this casing is replaced by strainers with vertical slots ; a flowing artesian well is the best case, but often a pump, to be installed in the aquifer, is required to bring the water back to the surface.

Upon usage, water boreholes do deteriorate, encountering anomalies such as strainer clogging or deformation, pump failure, damaged casing, or well collapse; these anomalies reduce or even stop the water flow back to surface.

In order to establish the right diagnosis, prerequisite to any refurbishing intervention, ECA group offers two types of  TV systems with swivelling head colour camera, one operational up to 500m depth, the other up to 2000m ; they permit a thorough TV inspection of the casing, the strainer, and the eventual pump.

As an option, the TV camera can house a system to measure the borehole trajectory and inclination.

A dedicated software allows to edit the exhaustive borehole inspection report.

Besides, the TV camera can be substituted with well logging probes permitting to measure continuously the water conductivity/salinity, temperature, normal resistivity and spontaneous potential (indicator of water quality), as well as the borehole internal diameter (caliper).

During the initial drilling phase (open hole), a gamma ray probe will detect the trace, within the crossed ground, of potassium, uranium and thorium, permitting to detect presence of clay, potential indicator of presence of ground water ; at the casing phase, strainers will therefore be installed in these zones.

On the other side, ECA Group offers solutions for wells leading to underground gas storage reservoirs. These wells are very small in diameter (ID 2’’), can be as deep as 3000m and require inspection to check the casing integrity. To meet that challenge, ECA group offers a twin head (frontal and radial/rotative) camera of 50 mm OD and operational down to 3500m.

This system has other applications such as hydrography and inspection of oil wells.

Another market lays with underground mine and geotechnical cavities as well as sinkholes, which need to be inspected and measured in size and volume. To meet that demand, ECA group offers a TV system which combines TV camera and 3D scanning laser; this system is operational up to 500m depth, from borehole of only 100mm ID. A dedicated software package performs data processing allowing a 3D representation of the cavity.

In this high tech evolving market ECA Group delivers a wide range of capable remote controlled systems that are used for a variety of tasks within the water boreholes and mainly for the ground water boreholes. With this capability, ECA Group is bringing contribution to solve the worldwide problem of saving water.