The use of grass as an environmentally friendly additive in water-based drilling fluids

Abstract

Excellent drilling fluid techniques are one of the significant guaranteed measures to insure safety, quality, efficiency, and speediness of drilling operations. Drilling fluids are generally discarded after the completion of drilling operations and become waste, which can have a large negative impact on the environment. Drilling materials and additives together with drill cuttings, oil, and water constitute waste drilling fluids, which ultimately are dumped onto soil, surface water, groundwater, and air. Environmental pollution is found to be a serious threat while drilling complex wells or high-temperature deep wells as these types of wells involve the use of oil-based drilling fluid systems and high-performance water-based drilling fluid systems. The preservation of the environment on a global level is now important as various organizations have set up initiatives to drive the usage of toxic chemicals as drilling fluid additives. This paper presents an approach where grass is introduced as a sustainable drilling fluid additive with no environmental problems. Simple waterbased drilling fluids were formulated using bentonite, powdered grass, and water to analyze the rheological and filtration characteristics of the new drilling fluid. A particle size distribution test was conducted to determine the particle size of the grass sample by the sieve analysis method. Experiments were conducted on grass samples of 300, 90, and 35 lm to study the characteristics and behavior of the newly developed drilling fluid at room temperature. The results show that grass samples with varying particle sizes and concentrations may improve the viscosity, gel strength, and filtration of the bentonite drilling fluid. These observations recommend the use of grass as a rheological modifier, filtration control agent, and pH control agent to substitute toxic materials from drilling fluids.

Insights into the applications of waste materials in the oil and gas industry: state of the art review, availability, cost analysis, and classification

“…Other authors have addressed studies about utilizing waste additives through different uses in the petroleum industry. Grass waste can be used to analyze filtration properties and mud rheological properties (Hossain and Wajheeuddin 2016). Waste created from trees can be used in drilling fluids as well as it can be invested as a lost circulation additive to improve the seepage loss according to Ramasamy and Amanullah (2018).…”

Evaluation of Clay Hydration and Swelling Inhibition Using Quaternary Ammonium Dicationic Surfactant with Phenyl Linker

“…The OBM is not frequently employed due to the high cost and stringent environmental regulations [ 16 , 17 , 18 ]. On the other hand, water-based mud (WBM) provides excellent rheological properties, has low preparation cost, and is environmentally friendly compared to the OBM [ 19 , 20 ]. However, the water contents in the WBM have a high affinity towards the water-sensitive shale in the wellbore formations, which leads to the hydration and swelling of shale [ 21 , 22 ].…”

Investigations into the coiled tubing partial underbalanced drilling (CT-PUBD) technique for drilling hard formations

“…The low mud weight in UBD helps reduce rock strength and release drill cuttings from the hole bottom and subsequently increase ROP (Guo 2001). In addition to the direct use of low-density liquid (i.e., water, oil, low-density brine), the low-weight mud can also be gas (i.e., N 2 , CO 2 , air) or two-phase fluids such as foams and aerated liquids (Hossain and Wajheeuddin 2016;Guo et al 2017). The main problem associated with underbalanced drilling is the poor wellbore stability (Di Meglio et al 2014;Udegbunam et al 2015;Cheng et al 2013).…”