oa Effects Of Graphene Materials On The Performance Of Ester Based Drilling Fluid

The idea of pushing the limits of drilling oil and gas wells by improving drilling fluids using conventional macro and micro type fluid additives is very crucial tasks especially to fulfill certain functional tasks. This is due to inadequate information on the physical, chemical, thermal and environmental characteristics of the additives. The industries are currently looking for cost efficient drilling operations, thus many researches are focusing on the wonders of nanotechnology in the drilling fluids which forms the basis of the work presented here. This project will describe the preliminary test results of graphene oxide (GO) and R-graphene oxide (RGO) enhancement as nano additive in drilling fluid formulation. This project is basically to test whether incorporation of graphene materials gives significant improvement to the ester based drilling fluid it terms of its rheological properties. Besides using commercial GO, RGO was synthesized by refluxing the palm oil methyl ester (POME) with graphene oxide for 24 hours. UV-VIS results verified the attachment of R group from POME to the graphene oxide. Both materials then were added to the newly synthesized ester based drilling fluid and then formulations and characterization were performed with different percentages of GO and RGO. The advantages of adding nano-sized molecules of GO and RGO to ester based drilling fluid are evidenced in the improvement in fluid permeability rate into porous formation which contribute to the stability of wellbore.