Experimental analysis on rheological and fluid loss control of water-based mud using new additives

There have been many improvements on the drilling fluids due to the increased amount of environmental and safety concerns. Decreasing the amount of toxic additives found in the drilling fluid can help to reduce the environmental impact. It is very important to have an in depth knowledge of all the properties of drilling fluids in order to design an effective mud. This is because drilling fluids can have great variations in different properties such as rheology, fluid loss, density, viscosity, pH etc. Various effective additives can be used to change the properties of the mud as required. In light of the above fact, new additives have been introduced and the purpose of this research is to test these new additives used in drilling fluids as well as to understand the effect of these additives on the properties of the drilling fluid such as filtration rate, filter cake thickness, pH, and viscosity in order to improve the drilling performance. The new additives used in this experiment are rice husk ash (RHA), hay barn (HB) and hay barn ash (HBA). Initially, an experiment is conducted to understand the rheological properties of these additives before adding them to the mud. Later, different percentage of these additives is added into the plain mud at different temperatures and pressures and various tests are performed based on API standards. Key words: Rice husk, rice ash, hay barn.