Development of Nanoparticles as Additive to Drilling Mud to be Used as Viscosity and Filtrate Loss Modifier

Abstract

Conventional drilling fluids are often unable to fulfill certain functional tasks that are very important in challenging environment. This inefficiency of drilling fluid in performing certain task is mainly because of lack in particular rheological or filtrate loss properties. Hence, the industry is looking for a new kind of additives which can be helpful in maintaining these properties in desired range even under extreme conditions. Rice husk is an abundantly available agricultural waste which contains almost 15% silica in it. In this work, silica nanoparticles were synthesized from rice husk and used as an additive to improve the rheological and filtration loss properties. Synthesized nanoparticles were characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), field emission electron microscopy (FESEM) and energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDX). A general fluid was prepared that contained barite (6%), bentonite (3%) and carboxymethyl cellulose (3%) and the composition of nanomud was barite (6%), bentonite (3%), carboxymethyl cellulose (3%) and prepared silica nano particles (1%). Rheological studies were conducted on the two drilling fluids at different temperatures in the range of 30 to 100°C. API filtrate loss study was also conducted on both drilling fluids. Initial test results indicate that the newly developed nano-based drilling fluid exhibits improved rheological properties and shows less fluid loss as compared to the normal drilling fluid