Abstract
Power consumption of wellbore drilling in oil and gas exploitations count for 40% of total costs, hence power saving of WBM (water-based mud) by adding different concentrations of Al2O3, TiO2 and SiO2 nanoparticles is investigated here. A high-speed Taylor–Couette system (TCS) was devised to operate at speeds 0–1600 RPM to simulate power consumption of wellbore drilling using nanofluids in laminar to turbulent flow conditions. The TCS control unit uses several sensors to record current, voltage and rotational speed and Arduino microprocessors to process outputs including rheological properties and power consumption. Total power consumption of the TCS was correlated with a second-order polynomial function of rotational speed for different nanofluids, and the correlated parameters were found using an optimization technique. For the first time, energy saving of three nanofluids at four low volume concentrations 0.05, 0.1, 0.5 and 1% is investigated in the TCS simulating wellbore drilling operation. It is interesting to observe that the lower concentration nanofluids (0.05%) have better power savings. In average, for the lower concentration nanofluids (0.05%), power was saved by 39%, 30% and 26% for TiO2, Al2O3 and SiO2 WBM nanofluids, respectively. TiO2 nanofluids have better power saving at lower concentrations of 0.05 and 0.1%, while Al2O3 nanofluids have saved more power at higher concentrations of 0.5 and 1.0% compared with their counterpart nanofluids.
Highlights
Energy plays a big role in human life, and energy supply is one of the most important issues in many societies
To be ensure the accuracy of the Taylor–Couette system (TCS), it is first calibrated versus an Anton-Paar rheometer; all raw measurements of power consumptions with the accuracy of ± 0.01 W are reported in Tables 4, 5 and 6
The modelling of the measured power consumption with a polynomial function and accuracy of the fitting functions are expressed in Table 7 and the results of power savings are presented for each nanofluids
Summary
Energy plays a big role in human life, and energy supply is one of the most important issues in many societies. The main sources of energy in the world for human life are nonrenewable energy sources, especially oil, methane gas and coal. The most possible way to overcome the energy crisis of fossil fuels is to explore and drill more oil and gas wells by 2020 (Aftab et al 2017). There are many concerns to maintain safe and trouble-free drilling process at high-pressure high-temperature (HPHT) conditions to protect shale stability and smooth drilling without damage with drilling equipment. For this and other reasons, oil-based mud (OBM) and water-based mud (WBM) should be used and improved by nanoparticles to alleviate tribology and rheology. Reducing friction between rotating surfaces can enhance asperity, contact surfaces and abrasiveness (Booser 1984) while rheology of drilling fluids can be improved by improving characteristics such as gel strength, viscosity, yield point and filtration loss (Chhabra and Richardson 1999)
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