An Experimental Study on the Performance of Calcium Carbonate Extracted from Eggshells as Weighting Agent in Drilling Fluid

Abstract

Drilling mud density is an important factor in drilling operations. The cost of the drilling mud used for oil and gas well drilling can be 10%-15% of the total drilling cost, and the deeper the well, the more the needed drilling mud. This research aims to prepare a mud that provides performance similar to the conventional mud and to lower down the dependency of primordial CaCO3 technology by exploring it from trash/polluted and naturally occurring materials. For that purpose, a mud was prepared by replacing primordial CaCO3 with CaCO3 derived from eggshells, as eggshells contain CaCO3 in high amounts ranging from 70% to 95%. The success of this project will provide an affordable solution and an alternative way to explore new methodologies of obtaining CaCO3. The obtained results of this research are quite satisfactory. CaCO3 obtained from eggshells is used in high amounts, 275–410g to achieve density ranges from 9.5 to 11.0 pounds per gallon whereas, the needed quantity of pure CaCO3 is 150g to obtain density of 10.5 pounds per gallon. Apart from this, it is also observed that eggshell based CaCO3 samples are more efficient in rheological properties compared to the market samples of CaCO3. The pH of pure CaCO3 sample of 10.5 pounds per gallon density is almost the same with the sample of eggshell CaCO3 of 10.5 pounds per gallon density.