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Experimental study of improved rheology and lubricity of drilling fluids enhanced with nano-particles

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Abstract

An experimental study of the rheology and lubricity properties of a drilling fluid is reported, motivated by applications in highly deviated and extended reach wells. Recent developments in nanofluids have identified that the judicious injection of nano-particles into working drilling fluids may resolve a number of issues including borehole instability, lost circulation, torque and drag, pipe sticking problems, bit balling and reduction in drilling speed. The aim of this article is, therefore, to evaluate the rheological characteristics and lubricity of different nano-particles in water-based mud, with the potential to reduce costs via a decrease in drag and torque during the construction of highly deviated and ERD wells. Extensive results are presented for percentage in torque variation and coefficient of friction before and after aging. Rheology is evaluated via apparent viscosity, plastic viscosity and gel strength variation before and after aging for water-based muds (WBM). Results are included for silica and titanium nano-particles at different concentrations. These properties were measured before and after aging the mud samples at 80 °C during 16 h at static conditions. The best performance was shown with titanium nano-particles at a concentration of 0.60% (w/w) before aging.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the reviewers for their insightful comments which have served to significantly improve the present article.

Funding

This research did not receive any specific Grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Mechanical/Aeronautical Engineering, Salford University, Manchester, England, M54WT, UK

    O. Anwar Bég & Ali Kadir

  2. Petroleum Engineering, 228 Malecón del Salado, Guayacanes y Jiguas, Guayaquil, Ecuador

    D. E. Sanchez Espinoza

  3. Department of Mathematics, Vaagdevi College of Engineering, Warangal, Telangana, India

    MD. Shamshuddin

  4. Department of Mathematics, COMSATS Institute of Information Technology, Lahore, 54000, Pakistan

    Ayesha Sohail

Authors
  1. O. Anwar Bég
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  2. D. E. Sanchez Espinoza
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  3. Ali Kadir
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  4. MD. Shamshuddin
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  5. Ayesha Sohail
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Correspondence to MD. Shamshuddin.

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Appendix

Appendix

Properties of nano-particles used in the experiments (see Tables 27, 28).

Table 27 Properties of titanium oxide TiO2 nano-particles (US Research Nanomaterials, Inc, 2016)
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Table 28 Properties of silicon dioxide SiO2 nano-particles (US Research Nanomaterials, Inc, 2016)
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Bég, O.A., Espinoza, D.E.S., Kadir, A. et al. Experimental study of improved rheology and lubricity of drilling fluids enhanced with nano-particles. Appl Nanosci 8, 1069–1090 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13204-018-0746-4

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