Novel Fibrous Lost Circulation Materials Derived from Deceased Date Tree Waste

Abstract

Abstract A novel fibrous eco-friendly lost circulation material (LCM) has been developed using natural date tree waste as raw material. As the source of raw material is sustainable and available in huge quantity in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and in the Middle Eastern Region, it has a great potential to be used as a raw material for the manufacturing of local made fibrous lost circulation material for the application during drilling and cementing to mitigate loss of circulation. This paper describes the properties of fibrous lost circulation material in different water based drilling mud systems. The raw material for the fibrous LCM is deceased date tree waste that are available in huge quantity every year. Deceased date tree trunk has been used to produce fibers for the application in drilling industry. The trunk has been subjected to crushing and grinding process to generate fibrous materials of different sizes and aspect ratio. The fibrous material has been incorporated in different water based mud systems such as gel polymer (bentonite) mud, KCl polymer mud, NaCl polymer mud and CaCl2 polymer mud. These fiber containing muds have been tested using pore plugging test (PPT) apparatus for evaluating the sealing efficiency of the fibrous material. 2 mm slotted disk has been used as filter medium simulating fractured formation of the wellbore. Experiments carried out at high pressure and high temperature (HPHT) conditions prove that the fibrous material is a perfect choice to be used to as lost circulation material for combating moderate type of lost circulation.