Advantages of BioBased Drilling Fluid

Drilling fluids are essential for optimizing drilling operations, maximizing efficient drills, and successfully producing wellbores.

Drilling fluid, also known as drilling mud or completion fluid, concerning petroleum engineering, is a viscous fluid that is a mixture of different chemicals and water used in petroleum and natural gas drilling operations. The intent of drill mud is to force cuttings from rock to the surface. Drilling fluids also have the benefit of cooling down the drill bit and lubricating the bit and rock for more efficient drilling. These fluids also act as a barrier pushing against the sides of the drill wall, through hydrostatic pressure, ensuring the drill hole does not collapse. Also, because drill fluids are heavier than water, they ensure groundwater does not flow into the borehole if encountered.

What Is Drill Fluid?

Drilling fluids are generally mixtures of chemical solvents, brines, and lubricating fluids with water added to increase volume, enough so that the borehole is adequately full during operations. A majority of drill muds are based on petroleum products such as mineral oil and use proprietary blends of other chemicals such as surfactants and lubricants. Numerous drill fluid blends are combined for various drilling environments, strata types, and on whether the drilling occurs on land or water. Drill muds can also be formulated, using biodegradable drilling fluids, that leaves no harmful after product should a spill occur. This purpose is where biobased drilling fluids are most considered.

In general, drilling muds that are predominately water-based work relatively well for vertical drilling at shallow to medium depths. For more involved operations, those that involve horizontal drilling and increased depths, oil-based muds are typically used. This is especially important to add lubricity and decrease heat, in order to protect drill equipment from such extreme operations.

How Are Drill Fluids Classified?

There are many industry-based classifications of muds and fluids.

The primary classification scheme involves the base used in the fluid or mud and generally falls into 1 of 3 categories : (1) water-based, (2) oil-based (or non-water based), and (3) gas-based. Each category can be further sub-divided based on the performance requirements of the fluid and the environment the fluid will be used in, specifically the requirements of the drill, whether that is horizontal or vertical drilling, the type of strata that will be drilled through and the depth of the drill operations.

How Fluids Are Used?

The recent utilization of horizontal drilling and fracking techniques has brought drilling fluid to the forefront of environmental awareness and environmental responsibility of drilling companies. Fracking is the process of drilling down into strata before a high-pressure water mixture is directed at the rock to release or liberate the natural gas contained within the rocks.

Drilling fluids, water, surfactants, and sand are pumped into the strata at extremely high pressure in order to ‘fracture’ the rocks. This process allows for the natural gas trapped in the rocks to escape and ‘liberate’ the gas from the rocks enabling it to be captured and used for commercial and industrial purposes.

In order to fracture as much rock and thus liberate as much gas as possible vertical wells are drilled, and then horizontal wells drilled protruding out.

There have been a number of concerns regarding the drilling debate, at least environmentally. These concerns are regarding water use, the millions of gallons used to create the fracturing pressure, the release of gas into the air and the potential for drilling fluid spill are the primary concerns.

Fracking technology has been used since the 1950’s and been a proven technology and to alleviate these concerns, engineers have worked to alleviate these concerns by ensuring no natural gas escapes, by treating the used water so that contaminants are removed and, with regard to this article, more environmentally friendly drilling fluids are being used, including biobased, biodegradable drilling fluids. Since this technique has been used, nearly 8 million wells have been drilled and completed producing over a 0.5 quadrillions cubic feet of clean natural gas and nearly 8 billion barrels of crude oil.

How can drilling fluid be used to create even more environmentally friendly drilling operations?

First, fluids have a number of uses throughout drilling operations. As mentioned before they seal the well, through hydrostatic pressure, to ensure that no groundwater intrudes into the borehole. It temporarily traps the gas from escaping after liberation until the drill water and fluids can be removed and the gas captured. Heavier drill fluids can be added to ensure that the walls of the drill wall remain intact and do not fall into the well. The drilling process, and how drilling fluids are used in it, are fairly straight forward.

First, drilling muds are pumped from mud pits where they are securely held until use. These muds are pumped onto the drill bits to provide cooling, lubrication, and easier drilling operations. The mud is circulated throughout the drilling front region and taken back up, along with the drilled rock to form, what is called, completed fluids where it is held in completion ponds and then treated to produce a clean mixture for release back into the environment.

One crucial aspect of using biodegradable drilling fluids is that when the water, completion mud, is treated any residual fluids will biodegrade naturally and safely to their constituent molecules. This is just one example of the advantage of using biodegradable fluids over petroleum-based fluids. Another benefit, biobased fluids perform the same if not better during drilling operations. Second, they can decrease the costs of drilling operations by a number of ways. With increased lubricity, biobased fluids can decrease the drilling time by enabling drilling to go through rock faster and by keeping the drill bit cooler, enabling longer drilling periods. Further, this higher lubricity decreases wear on drilling equipment.

Finally, thousands of gallons of drilling fluids are used throughout the process and should a spill of these fluids accidentally occur. Biobased biodegradable drill fluids can help lessen the environmental impacts of fluids leaks and spills. Their release will do much less harm to the environment, and allow for faster cleanup.

In addition, the use of biobased biodegradable drill fluids, if they have been certified by the BioPreferred program, may aid in relations with government entities. This is because there are Federal Purchasing Requirements that state that government agencies and their contractors must use certified biobased products, including biobased lubricants, hydraulic fluids and cleaners if there is no appreciable degradation in performance from petroleum based products

The Army Tank-Automotive RD&E Center (TARDEC) completed a demonstration of related biodegradable fluids, specifically biobased hydraulic fluids, used in military equipment for construction purposes. The demonstration, that lasted over a year, found that all fluids tested in equipment performed successfully, meeting specifications and having performance indices that were as good as, if not better, than traditional petroleum-based fluids.

Further, these fluids were prescribed for construction operations that occurred in environmentally sensitive areas in order to reduce the release of hazardous waste and prevent the hazardous contamination of soils and surface water should an accidental spill or leak occur.

Please visit https://www.elementbio.com/product-category/biobased-fluids/drilling-fluids/ for our product listings.