Research on the Development and Plugging Capacity of a Honeycomb Porous Lost-Circulation Material

Abstract

Reducing economic losses and protecting producing strata are important links in the process of oil and gas exploration and exploitation. The key to avoid these problems lies in reducing well leakage accidents in the process of exploitation, in which the correct selection of plugging materials plays a decisive role. In view of the low sealing strength, complex construction, difficulty in unblocking, and high cost of the bridge lost-circulation material (LCM) currently used in plugging, this paper demonstrates the development of a highly elastic honeycomb porous LCM in a targeted manner. Indoor evaluation of the material shows it has good compression resilience and tensile strength: its 50% compression permanent deformation is less than 10% and tensile strength is more than 100 kPa; its retention rate under acidic conditions is more than 97%; it is basically not acid soluble; and at 100 °C aging conditions, the abovementioned performance and properties are maintained in a good manner. Due to the rebound characteristics of the highly elastic honeycomb porous LCM, the material can smoothly enter into different fractures to achieve a good plugging effect under the condition of choosing a suitable size.

Numerical Simulation of Gas–Liquid Gravity Displacement in Vertical Fractures during Drilling of Carbonate Formations

“…There are frequent releakages after temporary plugging. Several attempts have been made to overcome this deficiency, − and a recent progress on this issue is the application of graphene nanosheets as LCM. Graphene is a kind of chemically stable material with rather high strength.…”

Novel smart plugging material for high‐temperature gas well

“…The complex formation brings severe challenges to conventional plugging materials and puts forward higher requirements for temperature resistance, compressive strength, and retention capacity of plugging materials 4–6 . For the development of lost circulation materials for high‐temperature gas wells, series of works have been developed, mainly focusing on gel and temperature‐sensitive shape memory materials 7–18 …”

“…[4][5][6] For the development of lost circulation materials for high-temperature gas wells, series of works have been developed, mainly focusing on gel and temperaturesensitive shape memory materials. [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18] Bai et al [19][20][21] have developed a gel plugging material with temperature resistance up to 160 C based on the adhesive plugging characteristics. The storage modulus is up to 60 Pa. Mansour et al 22,23 first proposed the intelligent temperature-sensitive shape memory plugging material, which can expand under high-temperature environment, improve the plugging efficiency of fracture formation, and has a good wellbore strengthening effect.…”