EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION ON THE EFFECT OF TEMPRATURE USING YAM AS A DRILLING MUD ADDITIVE.

Temperature increases with depth as we drill through or within deep formations; therefore, producing from such high temperature zones involves several challenges to petroleum engineers in terms of drilling, completion, and production. This makes it necessary to study the rheology of drilling fluids and how it is affected by these changes. Laboratory tests were carried out to determine the mud weight, pH, plastic viscosity, yield point, gel strength of mud samples at different conditions of temperature and concentration of yam powder used as an additive. The first stage was to investigate how the mud properties of water-based Bentonite muds are affected by different concentration (3g, 5g, 7g and 9g) of yam powder added as an additive to improve the muds properties. The second stage was to investigate the effects of temperature on the mud properties at different concentrations of yam additive with a temperature variation of 28℃, 40℃, 60℃ and 80℃. From the results obtained, it could be seen that the mud weight, plastic viscosity, yield point and gel strength improved significantly but the pH reduced as the yam powder was added to the fresh mud at various concentrations. The mud weight, pH, plastic viscosity and yield point decreased as the temperature increased from 28℃ to 80℃. The gel strength showed increase with increasing temperature of 28℃ to 80℃. From this work, temperature has a remarkable effect on properties of drilling mud. Proper knowledge of the key factors governing the selection of drilling mud is critical for appropriate drilling mud selection because the behavior of the drilling mud under high temperature is extremely important for drilling geothermal wells and for drilling deep wells.