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Experimental Study of Nanoparticles Application to Enhance Properties of Water-baseddrilling Fluid

Ziaee, Hossein | 2014

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  1. Type of Document: M.Sc. Thesis
  2. Language: Farsi
  3. Document No: 46124 (06)
  4. University: Sharif University of Technology
  5. Department: Chemical and Petroleum Engineering
  6. Advisor(s): Rashtchian, Davood; Hazanfari, Mohammad Hossein
  7. Abstract:
  8. One of the most well-established methods of increasing oil production rate from existing fields is infill drilling. However, drilling these depleted reservoirs with conventional high density drilling fluids may cause formationdamage problems and subsequently reduce the expected production rate. To overcome these technical problems, the use of lightweight aphron based fluids isincreasing rapidly in the petroleum industry. Rheological and fluid loss performance of aphron based drilling fluids can be improved in the presence of nanoparticles; however, very limited information is available in this field. Moreover, a thorough knowledge about the hydrodynamic flow behavior of drilling fluids inthe wellbore and predicting the cutting transport efficiency under effect of various operational conditions are very important in order to optimize the drilling process. A computational fluiddynamics (CFD) software package isused for this goal. This project consists of two parts of laboratory and simulation studies. In the first part, various physico-chemical properties of aphron based drilling fluids e.g., rhological, filtration and stability will be studied and the impact of various factors such as xanthan gum bio-polymer, surfactant, starch and salt concentrations on these properties are investigated. After that, the same experiments are performed in the presence of silica nanoparticles to figure out the efficiency of addition of nanoparticles to the formulations. Experimental results showed that presence and concentration of xanthan gum bio-polymer, surfactant and starch enhanced the properties of aphron based fluids while salinity is deteriorating the efficiency of the system. Addition of nanoparticles enhanced the general properties of the system. Test results show that the addition of nanoparticles, rheological properties and stability of the system improved and in some instances nanoparticles desirably decrease the filter loss volume by about of 25%. The results of 3D CFD simulation showed that design and formulation of the additives is very important for having the best cutting transport practice. Aphronization of the based fluids and addition of nanoparticles to the fluid desirably increases the cutting transport ratio and as a result we have better transport practice. With increasing the mud flow rate, cutting transport ratio, but from the other point total pressure drop of the system increases. Thus, for each drilling practice an optimum rate of mud flow should be optimized. Moreover, results of simulation indicate that an increase in cutting size decreases the cutting transport. Increasing rate of penetration increases enhances the cutting transport but after achieving to an optimum ratio, cutting transport ratio decreases. In order to achieve the best drilling practice, determination of the optimum mud flow rate as well as rate of penetration is of great importance
  9. Keywords:
  10. Nanoparticles ; Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) ; Rheological Properties ; Stability ; Surfactants ; Aphron Based Fluids ; Cutting Transport

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