You have no items in your shopping cart.
ABSTRACT
Drilling for oil and gas has become a recurrent trend in the known world. This largely involves the use of drilling fluid that is non-corrosive. In perfect monitored conditions, the use of inhibitors to prevent corrosion is both technically justified and economically viable. Thus the use of additives to control mud pH becomes essential. In this work, the suitability of oil palm fruit fibre, ripe plantain peels as well as unripe plantain peels as drilling and pH control agents was studied. Drilling fluid samples were formulated and then treated using the prepared local materials (oil palm fruit fibre and plantain peels).
The results obtained when the oil palm fruit fibre (used as a pH control agent) was added to the prepared water based drilling mud shows it does not meet the standard pH value as recommended by API. The proposed pH additive also contained low concentrations of sodium and potassium whose hydroxides are key to achieving standard pH values.
The result obtained when ripe and unripe plantain peels (used as pH control agents) were added to formulated spud mud suggests that they meet the accepted pH standard as recommended by API. The ripe plantain peels additive attained a maximum pH value of 10 when added to formulated mud. The unripe peel used as pH control additive also reached a similar value. However, sodium and potassium contents were much higher in the unripe plantain additive in its pure state compared to the ripe plantain. Thus lesser quantity of the unripe plantain peels as mud pH control agent would be required to increase mud pH compared to the ripe plantain peels. It is recommended that ripe and unripe plantain peels should be judiciously used as substitute to foreign/imported mud pH control agent. Further research should be carried out to discover other local materials that could potentially be used as mud pH control agents.
