Effects of Contaminants on the Rheological Properties of Oil Based Muds

T.N. Chikwe¹ , E.C. Nwakanma²

Section:Research Paper, Product Type: Journal-Paper
Vol.7 , Issue.1 , pp.7-12, Feb-2020

Online published on Feb 28, 2020

Copyright © T.N. Chikwe, E.C. Nwakanma . This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
 

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Abstract :
Oil based muds obtained from the Niger Delta area of Nigeria were contaminated with various concentrations of salt and cement contaminants. Molar concentrations of 1.0 M, 3.0 M, 5.0 M, 7.0 M and 10.0 M of salt as well as those of cement were introduced into 10.0 Liters of the Oil based mud respectively with the molar concentrations corresponding to 10.0%, 30.0%, 50.0 %, 70.0% and 100.0 % of the contaminated mud system. The Rheological properties of the contaminated Oil base muds were determined with the use of a Fann Model 35 Viscometer. Results obtained showed that the Plastic viscosity and the Gel strengths of the Oil based mud contaminated with 30.0 % salt solution were within American Association of Drilling Engineers (AADE) specification while only 10.0 % of the cement contaminated Oil based mud fell within AADE specification in terms of Plastic viscosity and Gel strengths, also 50.0 % of both salt and cement contaminated Oil based mud were within AADE specification in terms of Yield point. The salt used as contaminant was sodium chloride (NaCl) while the cement used was portland cement with chemical composition 3CaO.SiO2, 2CaO.SiO2, 3CaO.Al2O3 and 4CaO.Al2O3FeO3 and the rheological properties (Plastic Viscosity, Yield point and Gel strengths) generally increased with increase in concentration of the contaminants however results obtained from Pearson’s correlation coefficient analyses showed that the rate of increase was higher with the cement contaminant indicating that cement has a more devastating effect on the mud properties compared to salt.

Key-Words / Index Term :
Plastic viscosity; yield point; gel strength; drilling; salt; cement

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