Water and Oil-Based Mud Filtration Control using Varieties of Citrus Peels.

Abstract

Properties of water and oil-based drilling muds were formulated with local fluid loss control additives such as; extracts of orange, grape, lime, and lemon peels, they were investigated and compared with those of standard muds. For drilling success to be achieved with the use of locally available materials, the mud rheological properties must be suitable to drill through formations with minimal or no loss of fluid to the formation. In order to achieve this, it was necessary that drilling fluid with proper chemical additives be used. In this study, at a constant temperature and pressure of 371K and 100psi respectively, fresh water and oil-based muds were formulated in which PAC, the fluid loss control additive was replaced with extracts of orange, grape, lime, and lemon peels which was subjected to filtration. The result showed that for water-based mud at fluid filtration time between 5seconds to 50seconds gave fluid loss as 3mls to 10.4mls for the control fluid, which is the formulated conventional drilling mud (NFluid) and 4.5mls to 15mls for oil-based mud control fluid between 5seconds to 30seconds. Samples with extracts of orange, grape, lime and lemon had final fluid filtration losses of 13.4mls, 11.4mls, 15mls and 18.3mls respectively at 5 to 50 seconds for water-based mud and final fluid filtration losses of 88.6mls, 17.27mls, 9.8mls and 10.2mls respectively between 5 seconds to 30seconds. This showed that for water-based mud, none of the sample is suitable enough to reduce fluid loss as the fluid loss of the control sample (conventional water-based mud/NFluid) was far less in all other samples. But for oil-based mud, only samples with extracts of grape and lemon peels were suitable for fluid loss control as they had better and reduced fluid losses of 9.8mls for the sample with extracts of grape peel and 10.2mls for sample containing extracts of lemon peel at the end of the 30secs filtration time. The power law model was used to calculate the rheological parameters which showed that the formulated mud samples have shear thinning or pseudoplastic characteristics. This can guide the oil and gas industry on decision making to combat/control fluid filtration loss to formation while drilling process is carried out.