Experimental study on thermal, rheological and filtration control characteristics of drilling fluids: effect of nanoadditives

Abstract

Cooling the drill bit is one of the major functions of drilling fluids, especially in high temperature deep drilling operations. Designing stable drilling fluids with proper thermal properties is a great challenge. Identifying appropriate additives for the drilling fluid can mitigate drill-bit erosion or deformation caused by induced thermal stress. The unique advantages of nanoparticles may enhance thermal characteristics of drilling fluids. The impacts of nanoparticles on the specific heat capacity, thermal conductivity, rheological, and filtration control characteristics of water‐based drilling fluids were experimentally investigated and compared in this study. Al2O3, CuO, and Cu nanoparticles were used to prepare the water-based drilling nanofluid samples with various concentrations, using the two-step method. Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) and X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) were utilized to study the nanoparticle samples. The nanofluids stability and particle size distribution were, furthermore, examined using Dynamic Light Scattering (DLS). The experimental results indicated that thermal and rheological characteristics are enhanced in the presence of nanoparticles. The best enhancement in drilling fluid heat capacity and thermal conductivity was obtained as 15.6% and 12%, respectively by adding 0.9 wt% Cu nanoparticles. Furthermore, significant improvement was observed in the rheological characteristics such as the apparent and plastic viscosities, yield point, and gel strength of the drilling nanofluids compared to the base drilling fluid. Addition of nanoparticles resulted in reduced fluid loss and formation damage. The permeability of filter cakes decreased with increasing the nanoparticles concentration, but no significant effect in filter cake thickness was observed. The results reveal that the application of nanoparticles may reduce drill-bit replacement costs by improving the thermal and drilling fluid rheological characteristics and decrease the formation damage due to mud filtrate invasion.

Transient response of near-wellbore supercharging during filter cake growth

“…where k e (t) is the equivalent filter cake permeability, mD; k 1 is the real situation with time-dependent filter cake permeability, mD; w o is the constant filter cake thickness, m; w(t) is the real situation with time-dependent filter cake thickness, m; and r w is the filter cake inner radius, m. During drilling, many factors such as drill-string rotational speed, annulus velocity, drilling fluid type, solid particle size, formation temperature, formation pressure, and formation permeability, can influence the time-dependent properties of the filter cake (Jaffal et al, 2018;Ma et al, 2020;Ribeiro et al, 2017;Veisi et al, 2020;Yao et al, 2014). Some experimental and mathematical models have been conducted to study the filter cake growth process (Fisher et al, 2000;Hashemzadeh and Hajidavalloo, 2016;Jaffal et al, 2017;Ma et al, 2020;Rabbani and Salehi, 2017), and their results showed that both the thickness and permeability of filter cake obey the exponential changing modes.…”

Inhibition effect of nano-silica synergistic corrosion inhibitor on 110SSsteel in ultra-high temperature organic acidic environment

“…Therefore, researchers propose to use a combination of synergistic agents and corrosion inhibitors to enhance the corrosion efficiency of corrosion inhibitors through synergistic corrosion inhibition [18]. Nanomaterials are an emerging synergistic additive that, due to their large specific surface area, porous structure, and thermal stability, have been applied in fields such as enhanced oil recovery, improved fracturing fluid performance, and anti-corrosion coatings in the oil and gas industry [19][20][21][22]. Research has shown that adding nanoparticles to VES-based fluids can change the shape of micelles from spherical to vermicular, effectively improving the temperature resistance and rheological properties of VES-based fluids [23].…”

Static and dynamic evaluation of formation damage due to barium sulfate scale during water injection in carbonate reservoirs

“…The chemical incompatibility between injected water and formation brine 1 3 results in mineral scale formation, that is one of the serious problems in oil fields. In addition to the incompatible ionic composition of injection water, inorganic scales are formed due to brine supersaturation with changes in temperature, pressure, and pH value (Farrokhrouz et al 2020;Nikoo et al 2020;Veisi et al 2020;.…”