Characterisation of a Drilling Fluid Sieve Fraction by Means of Quantitative Image Analysis.

摘要

The Russian company Purneftegas is responsible for the exploitation of the Bukasov field (PK119-20) in North Siberia. Over the past year various submersible pumps, from several wells, got severely damaged. Being uncertain about the cause of the damage, the company asked Hagoort and Associates Consultants in Delft for advice. They requested assistance from the Petrophysics section of Delft University of Technology to determine the content of the pump related drilling mud in order to trace relations between formation matter, well material and the cause of pump damage. For this reason the hard particles, which are able to damage parts of the pump, have to be separated and characterized. Eleven sieved drilling mud samples are available for particle analysis. To determine a hard particle content, which is related to the formation sediments, a combination of filtering and chemical cleaning for separation of the components and visual determination and quantitative image analysis is used. In this report a qualitative and quantitative description is given of the mentioned sieve samples. In addition, the analysis procedures, related tests based on these procedures and image analysis results, are placed in the appendices. Subsequently, the results are compared with earlier image analysis data on plugs and thin sections of the Panterra samples.