Assessment of temperature effects on water base mud properties

The purpose of testing drilling muds is to determine their ability to perform certain necessary functions of the oil industry standards. The extent to which drilling mud properties must be controlled varies with geologic conditions. In soft areas successful completion of a well may require very precise control of mud property, and the mud used is often an expensive and complicated chemical mixture. In hard rock areas plain water may be satisfactory and even superior drilling fluid. In addition to liquid muds, both air and gas are used as drilling fluid with spectacular results in many areas. Therefore, the selection of mud type is governed by the specific requirements of the geologic area in question, and depends on the drilling fluid's ability to perform the function necessary in that area. Normally the mud properly testing conducted at ambient conditions which ignores the effects of temperature and pressure. Neglecting the effect of temperature and pressure on mud properly will lead to improper mud design which will result in certain situation to catastrophic consequences. In this project we are studying the effect of temperature on the properties of water base mud by using two different types of bentonite, MIL bentonite and Magco gel bentonite. In this project Mud chemical additive were added to the samples and mud properties were tested at various temperature. Results indicate that the apparent viscosity and plastic viscosity decreases with increasing temperature, meanwhile increasing temperature increases the volume of mud filtrate and increased mud cake thickness.