Development of a green multifunctional additive for applications in water-based drilling fluids

Abstract

Dynamism associated with drilling conditions such as during well completion may necessitate switching between overbalanced drilling and underbalanced drilling in the same drilling operation. One possible way to easily facilitate this is to use appropriate drilling fluid suitable for any drilling condition. A multifunctional drilling fluid additive gives the opportunity to develop drilling fluids that have the same base composition but different functionality. In this study, a novel additive was developed via alkaline extraction and hydrolysis of date pits components in a freezing-defreezing technique. This additive was tested in a water-based bentonite drilling fluid which was characterized in terms of density and filtration properties. The results showed that the drilling fluids containing this novel additive have low filtration properties attributed to products of complete alkaline hydrolysis of fatty acids and amino acids, and the unreacted alkali. The drilling fluid containing the novel additive when neutralized resulted in another drilling fluid of higher filtration properties and lower density. The potential of the un-neutralized drilling fluid to form a thin filter cake of low permeability makes it a suitable candidate for overbalanced drilling while the synergistic effect of both the low density and high filtration property of the neutralized drilling fluid favours its efficacy for underbalanced drilling. The multifunctionality of this novel additive derives from its potential to be used to develop both the overbalanced drilling fluid and underbalanced drilling fluid.