Lost Circulation Material(LCM)is an additive used to prevent lost of mud to the formation as a results from natural or induced fractured during drilling operation.Losses of mud could give great impact to the oil industry as it increases mud cost and rig time.The objective of this research was to investigate the effect of size and concentration of Oil Palm Empty Fruit Bunch(OPEFB)as LCM in water based mud(WBM).Several important properties of WBM rheology after adding the OPEFB namely plastic viscosity,apparent viscosity,yield point and gel strength were characterized.The sizes of OPEFB added into the WBM were 150um,250um,500um and l000μm while the concentration of OPEFB used were 5g,10g,15g and 20g in 350 mL of WBM.Results indicated that the plastic viscosity and apparent viscosity increased with increasing of the OPEFB concentrations.On the other hand,the plastic viscosity and apparent viscosity decreased with increasing sizes of OPEFB.Yield point increased as the concentration and size of OPEFB increases.This study indicated that OPEFB was effective to be used as LCM for size of 150μm and concentration of 15g whereby it produced least amount of fdtrate volume as well as good control in mud rheology.
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