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Drillmec is an international leader in design, manufacturing and distribution of drilling and workover rigs for onshore and offshore applications as well as a wide range of drilling equipment. It is a truly global company but remains deeply connected to its roots in the Mechanical Engineering Heart of Italy.
- Drillmec needed to make drilling ingress points for carbon-capture faster, safer and more cost efficient.
- The work can be labor intensive and the more staff there are on site, the greater the health and safety risks.
- Drilling the ingress points involved use of heavy machinery but also had to be very precise to avoid rework and control costs.
- Drillmec chose Allen-Bradley PowerFlex® 755TL AC drives to improve the precision of its automated drilling system.
- The company worked with Rockwell Automation to integrate, test and deploy the drives as part of its operational technology on site.
- Using the PowerFlex drives, Drillmec has been able to improve the precision and accuracy of its drilling technology, allowing the company to drill faster, with fewer staff on site.
- Improving operations helped Drillmec control costs and reducing the number of site visits required contributed to improved safety.
Drillmec is an international leader in design, manufacturing, and distribution of drilling and workover rigs for onshore and offshore applications as well as a wide range of drilling equipment.
The results achieved in over 100 years of international experience have been recognized by customers worldwide and stem from the company’s commitment to continuous improvement through the pursuit of high quality, strong focus on human resources and emphatic efficiency throughout the whole process.
Three principles lie at the core of the company's identity: safety, environment and innovation. Its worldwide reputation of reliability is a reflection of Drillmec’s extensive engineering development, timely deliveries and excellent after-sales service.
Challenge
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) involves trapping carbon at the point of emission – for example, in a factory – and then pumping it to a suitable underground storage facility where it is permanently stored, preventing it from being released into the atmosphere.
Creating new ingress points for CCS facilities involves precision drilling into complex rock strata. It’s heavy work, with an elevated level of health and safety risk.
To meet the growing demand for CCS, Drillmec needed to minimize the cost, risk and need for expensive rework in any drilling operations. And to achieve this, it had to find a way to improve the precision, ease of operation, and cost effectiveness of its drilling system.
As the electric system for the drilling platform is powered by the national power grid, a low harmonic factor needed to be ensured. This was necessary to keep the total harmonic distortion (THD) within 5%.
Solution
Drillmec upgraded its CCS drilling system with the Allen-Bradley PowerFlex® 755TL AC drives, adding them to the control systems for its technology’s solids-handling pumps.
Using Rockwell Automation drives with Active Front End (AFE) technology, Drillmec was able to ensure that the harmonic distortion factor of the system was kept within proper limits.
This enabled Drillmec to achieve more precise motor control, allowing it to optimize pump speed and performance for specific site conditions.
By optimizing drive performance, the company can reduce wear and tear on the system, as well as increasing efficiency and speed of operations to drill ingress points faster. And because its technology helps to automate many aspects of the drilling operations, it reduces the number of staff operators required to be on site.
Result
By minimizing wear and tear, the company expects to increase mean time between failure for relevant components of the system. Not only will this reduce maintenance costs, it will also help to keep the technology in operation longer, with less downtime. This improves utilization rates and enables Drillmec to drill more ingress points during any given time frame.
With fewer staff on site at any point, the challenge of ensuring compliance with health and safety standards is significantly simplified. And because the technology is more precise, and easier to dynamically adjust to compensate for changing site conditions, it’s more energy efficient over the long term. This is expected to reduce running costs and increase effectiveness even further.
As companies and states across the developed world look for ways to radically reduce emissions while also promoting economic growth, demand for CCS sites will grow. By developing a fast, precise, safe and affordable way to create new CCS sites, Drillmec is helping organizations and countries worldwide achieve their environmental and economic goals.
Published July 1, 2025