Lifting capacity efficiency using polyethylene beads: A numerical investigation

Abstract

Global demand growth has driven the development of more inventive methods for enhancing oil well drilling at lower prices and avoiding operational issues that slow down oil well drilling. The present research is significant because the lifting capacity may be increased by inserting polymer beads into drilling mud instead of high-cost additives. The numerical cuttings trajectory simulation was performed using the commercial ANSYS FLUENT 2019 R3 software to account for the influence of cuttings collisions. To test the cuts transport behavior owing to the presence of liquid and solid phases, the (Eulerian-Eulerian) model was utilized. The mind transfer rate is determined in this simulation by varying the operating parameters (drilling mud flow rate and temperature, cuttings size and inclination, drill pipe rotation and eccentricity) with and without polyethylene (PE) beads. The result show that the average error ratio between the results of the numerical simulation is 5 % with the experimental results of researcher Ismail. The higher the percentage of PE beads entering with the drilling fluid, the lower the concentration of the cuttings within the annular space of the simulation model. The concentration of cuttings within the annular space reaches 28 % when drilling fluid flows at a speed of 1.2 m/s without adding polyethylene PE beads. While it decreases to (17, 21, 24) % when adding beads by (6, 4, 2) %, respectively, at the same flow velocity of drilling fluid. The decrease in the concentration of cuttings within the annular space of the simulation model reaches 14 % when PE beads are inserting with drilling fluid by 6 % and the drill pipe rotation speed is 0 rpm, While the percentage increases to 65 % when the drill pipe rotation speed is increased to 120 rpm at the same ratio of PE beads entering with the drilling fluid. The reduction percentage of the cuttings concentration within the annular space of the simulation model reaches 30 % when 6 % of PE beads are entered into the drilling fluid at a temperature of 20 ℃, while the percentage is reduced to 14 % when the drilling fluid temperature is 50 ℃ at the same percentage of PE beads is inserting. The inserting of polyethylene (PE) beads with the drilling fluid has increased the ability of the drilling fluid to move the cuttings, but it is affected by the amount of drilling angle, as we found that the effect of the polyethylene (PE) beads is effective and clear when the drilling angle is 0˚ (vertical). While its effect becomes less at the drilling angle of directional wells and becomes very weak at the drilling angle of 90˚ (horizontal).The inserting of polyethylene (PE) beads with drilling fluid has a good and positive effect with large-sized cuttings when compared with the impact of the beads with smaller-sized cuttings.