THE PROJECT

In 2012, Australia and South Africa won the right to host the Square-Kilometre Array, which will be the world’s largest and most sensitive radio telescope.  A supercomputer was built at CSIRO’s Pawsey Centre for processing of the data, estimated to be in excess of 1017 floating point operations per second.

The energy requirements for cooling of the first stage of the Pawsey supercomputer were estimated to be 2,600 kW.  A large-scale geothermal cooling system has been implemented to provide this cooling power.

Rockwater designed and implemented the geothermal cooling system at Pawsey, starting with a hydrogeological assessment of a highly prospective, yet poorly-defined aquifer system, known as Mullaloo Aquifer. This highly-permeable aquifer is located at the top of the Tertiary-aged Kings Park Formation and cuts through older Cretaceous sediments beneath the Pawsey Centre.  

Two production bores and four injection bores were constructed and tested in the Mullaloo Aquifer under the supervision of Rockwater.  The production bores provide water of sufficient volume and temperature for cooling of the supercomputer.

Rockwater continues to oversee monitoring of the geothermal bores and periodically organises re-development of the bores to maintain their efficiency.

• Geological and geophysical interpretation
• Field investigation reporting
• Groundwater modelling (including thermal breakthrough modelling)
• Clogging risk assessments
• Filtration design
• Downhole packer injection valve

• Mud rotary bore drilling
• Pumping tests
• Rhodamine WT tracer tests
• Injection tests
• Membrane Filtration Index tests