Drilling fluid processing: preparation, maintenance and continuous conditioning
The following discussion is an overview of the operation of drilling fluids at the rig site, giving an insight to those less versed in the art of drilling oil and gas wells. Fluid processing at the rig site is currently a prime target for higher levels of mechanization and process control, leading towards automation. The drilling fluids' composition influences its properties and dynamic behaviour, and the various drilling fluid components and additives all have specific purposes related to the drilling process. The process of drilling fluid preparation and mixing on the drilling rig is described, and the means of maintaining suitable properties during the drilling process are discussed. Means and requirements are presented for enabling continuous conditioning of the drilling fluid to suit the variations in the wellbore and formation, pointing out current challenges in measurement, instrumentation, mechanization, and control that need to be solved. It is clear that a higher level of automation is required if we wish to achieve this goal.
Highly automated drilling fluids system improves HSE and efficiency, reduces personnel needs
Manual mud-mixing equipment have a higher risk of imprecision in the mixing process compared with highly automated systems.
Lithium lanthanum titanate ceramic as sensitive material for pH sensor: Influence of synthesis methods and powder grains size
Abstract The lithium lanthanum titanate (LLTO), prepared by two different methods (solid state reaction and sol–gel), has been studied as sensitive element for detecting the pH variations in aqueous solutions when used as a potentiometric sensor. This property is dependent on mechanical and thermal treatments of the synthesised powder. A screening design was performed with the material obtained by solid state reaction. Several parameters (grinding time, heating rate for sintering process…) have been optimized. The main step, which increases the sensitivity, is the grinding of the powder before a heat treatment when the LLTO is synthesised by solid state reaction. We suppose that a small grains size of the powder is favourable to the pH variations sensitivity. A comparison with LLTO synthesised by the sol–gel route without grinding is also shown. The sensitivities of these two materials to the pH variations are very similar.