A micro tunnel drill (MTBM) named "Blanche" made a new world record when it reached 1,496.48 meters, the longest distance ever with a tube placed using Direct Pipe®'s tunnel method.
MTBM was used in the local water supplier's purification plant in Army Bay, in Whangaparaoa, New Zealand.
According to the contractor, McConnell Dowell, the installation is a new world record. The task of MTBM was to replace an old 2.8-kilometer long drainage pipe.
In July 2018, the Herrenknecht company with this 6.2 million US dollar expensive MTBM machine exceeded the previous record of nearly 2 meters, a result reached in 2017 in Texas, USA.
Direct Pipe is the Herrenknecht branded MTBM drill machine that combines the advantages of the micro-tunnel and horizontal drilling in a machine so that the drill hole can be designed as a prefabricated pipeline installed in the form of a long unit.
"This is the first time the Direct Pipe system has been used in New Zealand," said McConnell Dowell's project manager Chris Powell.
"As a consequence, we were not restricted by traditional applications and could, therefore, use the Direct Pipe system in ways that had not been tried before.
"We put some pretty high expectations, but we learned a lot and achieved a real global knowledge of how this new tunnel technology can be used.
The purification plant's remediation started in August 2017 and is expected to be completed in early 2019.
