June 26, 2023

The Pig in the Drill Trench

The strange conglomerates

In the drill trench we have a pig – also called the Swine. Every time we drill an ice core, we get a lot of ice cuttings (chips) mixed in drill liquid from inside the drill. One of the messier parts of drilling ice cores. The mixture is pumped into a big tank that is heated so the ice melts to water and the drill liquid and water separates into two layers. The pure water can be poured out into the snow and the drill liquid reused in the borehole. The melting container is the pig! These days we have problems controlling the temperature in the tank so the electronics controlling the heating system was check as well as the heater system itself. Most of the day was used preparing and waiting for the skier to arrive. In the office Dorthe installed the monitors for the pyranometers mounted around the Dome and it is interesting to see the Dome to the south receives more than 1000 W/m2 which is much more than the direct radiation from the sun so there is a lot of reflection from the bright white snow surface. When drilling ice cores, we get some strange ‘conglomerates’ up together with the chips. They look like spheres built from the center and all the spheres are in half?? Help us figure out how they are formed.

What we did today:

1. Drilled three ice cores (last run 1128, drillers depth 2639.19 m).
2. Logging depth: 2651.69 m. Processing depth: 2650.45 m bag 4819.
3. Received Skier 13.
4. Organized all the cargo received on skiers 24th and 26th of June.
5. Installed pyrometer monitors.
6. Checked the pig in the drill trench.
7. Chiara cooked GREAT meals.

Ad 3: We received 6900 liters of fuel and retro’ed 2 GreenDrill pallets and 4 GreenDrill sledges

Weather today: Blue sky with scattered high clouds all day, SSW wind between 4 and 18 kt along the skiway and warm temperatures between -12 and -2°C.

FL, Dorthe Dahl-Jensen

The monitoring of the pyranometers mounted in a ring around the Dome.