Applying Machine Learning to Predict the Rate of Penetration for Geothermal Drilling Located in the Utah FORGE Site

Mohamed Arbi Ben Aoun and Tamás Madarász
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Mohamed Arbi Ben Aoun: Department of Civil, Geological and Mining Engineering, Polytechnique Montréal, 2500 Chemin de Polytechnique, Montréal, QC H3T 1J4, Canada
Tamás Madarász: Institute of Environmental Management, University of Miskolc, 3515 Miskolc-Egyetemváros, Hungary

Energies, 2022, vol. 15, issue 12, 1-21

Abstract: Well planning for every drilling project includes cost estimation. Maximizing the rate of penetration (ROP) reduces the time required for drilling, resulting in reducing the expenses required for the drilling budget. The empirical formulas developed to predict ROP have limited field applications. Since real-time drilling data acquisition and computing technologies have improved over the years, we implemented the data-driven approach for this purpose. We investigated the potential of machine learning and deep learning algorithms to predict the nonlinear behavior of the ROP. The well was drilled to confirm the geothermal reservoir characteristics for the FORGE site. After cleaning and preprocessing the data, we selected two models and optimized their hyperparameters. According to our findings, the random forest regressor and the artificial neural network predicted the behavior of our field ROP with a maximum absolute mean error of 3.98, corresponding to 19% of the ROP’s standard deviation. A tool was created to assist engineers in selecting the best drilling parameters that increase the ROP for future drilling tasks. The tool can be validated with an existing well from the same field to demonstrate its capability as an ROP predictive model.

Keywords: rate of penetration (ROP); predictive modeling; geothermal energy; machine learning; deep learning; random forests; artificial neural network; python programming (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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