Abstract
Nowadays, the reduction of the environmental impact associated with the operation of the oil industry is a primary concern. A growing trend is to develop low-toxicity formulations based on biodegradable components. In this sense, vegetable oils structured with nanomaterials could be an alternative to mineral or synthetic oils for sustainable fluid formulations. Hydrophobic fumed silica nanoparticles have the capability to change the rheological behavior of oil in suspensions, providing a large variety of non-Newtonian behaviors over a wide range of temperatures, from shear-thinning to gel-like, depending on the concentration and the nanosilica’s hydrophobicity, that permits the design of fluids with selected characteristic and applications. This work explores the microstructure and the rheological behavior of hydrophobic fumed silica dispersed in a sunflower oil as a function of temperature and pressure. The results suggest that the suspensions of hydrophobic silica in sunflower oil reveals appropriate rheological and thermal properties over a wide range of temperatures and pressures to serve as components of sustainable drilling fluids.
Highlights
Nanomaterials 2021, 11, 3037. https://Nowadays, the reduction of the environmental impact associated with drilling operation in both geothermal and oil wells is a primary concern
hydrophobic fumed silica (HFS) in vegetable oil suspensions reveals adequate thermal resistance to be used as a component in sustainable drilling formulations
The low temperature limit applied to drilling fluids is determined by the crystallization characteristic of the base oil since fumed silica does not act as a nucleating agent for oil crystallization
Summary
The reduction of the environmental impact associated with drilling operation in both geothermal and oil wells is a primary concern. Nanomaterials 2021, 11, 3037 environmentally-friendly muds [16] In this sense, some studies have explored vegetable oil formulations based on soybean oil [17,18] and palm methyl ester [19]. This work is part of a comprehensive study on the development of environmentallyfriendly fluids for drilling applications, using nanoparticles as rheology improvers dispersed in a continuous phase of vegetable origin. Suspension of organosepiolites in vegetable oil were studied [20] Both the microstructure and the rheological behavior of hydrophobic fumed silica (HFS) dispersed in a sunflower oil are explored, as a function of temperature and pressure
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