Dynamic Measurement of Drilling Fluid Rheology at Elevated Temperature and Pressure

Abstract

Due to instability and degradation of the conventional drilling fluids specially under high shear rate, elevated temperatures and chemically complex environments of deep and geothermal wells, it is essential to modify and develop stable batches of clay suspensions that can perform adequately under these conditions. To obtain batches, a reliable set-up should be designed and constructed to examine and measure all the properties that may possibly change under the prevailing conditions. A scaled dynamic flow loop is designed and built in the Department of Petroleum Engineering at the University of Petroleum & Minerals, Dhahran. This set-up can simulate efficiently the bottomhole condition e.g. high temperature up to 450°F, high shear rate up to 50,000 sec−1. The system pressure is maintained above the saturation pressure of water at the test temperature. Dynamic filteration rate and the corrosion rate is monitored instantaneously at wide range of bottomhole conditions. The flow parameters N&K,τ, γ etc., are obtained by measuring AP across the 3-tube viscometer using the DP 15-150 pressure differential transducers. The ambient properties are measured by Baroid multi-speed viscometer and compared with data obtained from the loop. Two batches composed of sepiolite and polymer were tested. Effective viscosity is increased significantly at high temperature for the first and second batches. The consistency and thermal stability of these fluids may be attributed to the transfer of sepiolite to smectite at high temperature and high shear.

Rheological properties and slurry behaviour in hard rock drilling

“…A vast amount of research has been performed to study fluid flow in annular sections in the past decades, which includes analytical solutions, numerical simulations and experimental studies. For example, Zamora et al (2005) performed a comparison of annulus pressure loss between the API standard model and field data. Laird (1957) proposed one of the initial fluid flow models that considered laminar flow of Bingham Plastic fluids in concentric annulus geometry.…”

Hydrophobic association copolymer as viscosifier for high‐temperature high‐pressure anti‐sedimentation performance of water‐based drilling fluid

“…Generally, the traditional high‐performance drilling fluid is mostly limited to clay‐based drilling fluid due to the high‐temperature high‐pressure (HTHP) drilling environment, and most were based on a continuous phase of oil. [ 3–5 ] However, the used oil‐based drilling fluid showed some drawbacks in past application cases. [ 6–8 ] Firstly, clay plays the role of rheology stabilizer in the oil‐based drilling fluid, such as preventing the settlement of weighting agent and the solid equivalence in the drilling process.…”

Su Bazlı Sondaj Sıvılarının Termal Döngü Testine Dayalı Termal Stabilitesi

“…Numerous investigator have conducted various studies on water based mud to investigate rheological behavior and filtration properties in high temperature and high saline environments. The common point of the all research is that several additives were added to the sepiolite based mud in order to obtain appropriate viscosity and filtration properties of mud samples (Carney and Meyer 1976;Guven 2007, 1982;Hilscher and Clements 1982;Moussa and Al-Marhoun 1985;Guven, Panfil, and Carney 1988;Zilch, Otto, and Pye 1991;U Serpen, Haciislamoglu, and Tuna 1992;U. Serpen 1999;Umran Serpen 2000).…”