RESUME OF A PAPER TITLED LABORATORY RESEARCH ON DEGRADABLE

DRILLING-IN FLUID FOR COMPLEX STRUCTURE WELLS IN COALBED

METHANE RESERVOIRS

Pre Assignment of Drilling Engineering Experiment

By:
Pradini Rahalintar
NIM: 22214003

PETROLEUM ENGINEERING
FACULTY OF MINING AND PETROLEUM ENGINEERING
INSTITUT TEKNOLOGI BANDUNG
2014

RESUME OF A PAPER TITLED LABORATORY RESEARCH ON DEGRADABLE

DRILLING-IN FLUID FOR COMPLEX STRUCTURE WELLS IN COALBED
METHANE RESERVOIRS
Pradini Rahalintar*, LIU Dawei1,*, WANG Qi, WANG Yishan, WANG Helin, YU Haifa1, YUAN
Menglei

Abstract
A degradable drilling-in fluid was developed to solve the contradiction between coalbed damage
control and the safety of drilling. The DIF conventional properties were analyzed, and to evaluate
its protection on coal desorption and seepage performance, the desorption rate and return
permeability were conducted. The good DIF can carry cuttings and protect sidewall. From the
experiments we know that the degradation rate is 85% when there was degradation agen added.

I.
INTRODUCTION
The contradiction between drilling safety and
coal bed damage control become serious. The
efficient development of coalbed methane
(CBM) is obstructed by borehole instability
and coal seam damage caused by the drillingin fluid (DIF). Therefore, clean water is
usually used as DIF to protect CBM resurces,
but it has low viscosity, high fluid loss, and
poor capacity of cutting-carrying. Traditional
DIF can effectively prevent the complicated
drilling accidents, but is poor in coal bed
protection, has negative effect on desorption
of CBM and is prone to blocking methane
seepage channels. To solve the contradiction
between coalbed damage control and the
safety of drilling, adegradable drilling-in
fluid was developed, which can not only
prevent drilling accident but also protect the
coal bed.
II.

DRILLING-IN FLUID
The DIF that is applicable to CBM reservoirs
should have these characteristics:
It should have a certain viscosity, which
is good for carrying cuttings.
It can form filter cake on borehole to
prevent well collapse, and the filter cake
Pradini Rahalintar 22214003

can be degraded to keep methane seepage

channel smooth.
It should have good protective effect on
coalbed.
It should be degradable, and degradation
rate should be above 80%, which is good
for flowback.

According to the above requirements and

principles, the laboratory experiments were
conducted to optimize viscosifying agent,
filtrate reducer and degradation agent for DIF
which is applicable to complex structural
wells and the DIF formula was worked out:
water, viscosifying agent at several types of
concentration, filtrate reduces, reservoir
protective agent, and degradation agent.
The conventional performance of DIF shows
that the DIF has a certain viscosity which
supports to carry cuttings, has gel property
and can form gel filter cake on borehole wall,
to effectively protect well and prevent further
invasion of DIF; fluid loss can be controlled
to eliminate well instability.

contaminated by DIF. The higher desorption

rate, the better the protective effect on CBM
desorption ability. The experimental
materials of desorption rate include: four coal
particle samples, clean water, the aqueous
solution with certain concentration and
degradation agent, degraded DIF, etc.

Figure 1. Relationship between degradation rate and

degradation time for drilling-in fluid at different
degradation agent concentrations

From Fig. 1 we can see the viscosity of DIF

continuously decreases and the degradation
rate continuously increases with the increase
of the degradation time and the further
increase of degradation agent concentration
will have little impact on degradation.
Degradation to the same viscosity requires
more time with the decrease of degradation
agent concentration.
III.

COAL BED DAMAGE CONTROL

EVALUATION
The output of CBM is under the combined
control of desorption, diffusion and seepage
process, the three processes are closely linked
and mutually restrained and the output of
CBM will affected if any process is damaged.
Therefore, DIF should have effective
protection on coal desorption, diffusion
ability and seapage ability in macroscopic
scale.
To evaluate those factors, there were 2
experiments method conducted. First is
desorption rate method and second is
permeability recovery rate methods.
Desorption rate method includes the
comparison of methane desorption quantity
of coal sample contaminated by DIF and
clean water or the methane desorption
quantity of coal sample after and before
Pradini Rahalintar 22214003

The method and procedure of desorption rate

are as follows: coal particles are put into the
coal sample tank of HTHP gas adsorption and
desorption tester and make vacuum
degassing. The temperature of constant
temperature system is adjusted at
experimental temperature, and the valves of
high pressure methane cylinder and injection
tank are opened to aerate the coal sample
tank. Depressurization is made and excess
gas is discharged, a certain amount of
working fluid is injected into coal sample
tank and soaked for a certain time. The
working fluid is discharged, the methane
volume Di in desorption instrument is
measured in 120 min. The desorption rate Rd
of coal sample is calculated by the formula
Rd=Di/Dw100%, where Dw is the methane
desorption quantity of coal samples under the
test condition of clean water.
The method and procedures of permeability
recovery rate are: coal samples are made
vacuum degassing. The initial permeability
Ko is tested by reverse measuring coal
sample under different backflow pressure
difference. Coalface is contaminated and
infused in forward direction by DIF for 1
hour. Coal face is washed by degradation
agent solution of a certain concentration for 3
hours. The permeability Ki is tested by
reverse measuring coal sample under
different backflow pressure differences. The
permeability recovery rate Rf is calculated by
the formula Rf=Ki/Ko100%.
The result of the first experiment shows that
the invasion of working liquid will obstruct

coal desorption ability, the addition of

degradation agent into DIF developed by us
can improve the coal desorption ability, and
the DIF developed by us possesses the same
protective effect of coal desorption as clean
water.

is applicable to complex structure wells and

the DIF formula was worked out.
The DIF shows the same protective effect on
coal desorption as water, and good protection
effect on seepage ability, the permeability
recovery rate is all above 60% at different
flowback pressures and up to 100%.
V.
REFERENCES
LIU Dawei1, WANG Qi, WANG Yishan,
WANG Helin, YU Haifa, YUAN Menglei.
Laboratory Research on Degradable Drillingin Fluid for Complex Structure Wells in
Coalbed Methane Reservoirs. China. 2013

Experiment results of methane permeability

recovery rate for different coal samples
By analyzing the second experiment results,
we found out the DIF presented in the paper
has good protective effect on seepage ability.
The permeability recovery rate is all above
60% at different flowback pressures,
increasing with the rise of flowback pressure,
and even reaches up to 100%.

IV.

CONCLUSIONS
The DIF has good conventional properties,
they are certain viscosity allows it to carry
cuttings effectively, and gel property allow it
to form gel filter cake on borehole wall,
which can effectively protect borehole and
prevent further invasion of DIF. Fluid loss is
controllable, to eliminate hole instability.
Laboratory experiments were carried out to
screen out viscosifying agent, filtrate reducer
and degradation agent suitable for DIF which

Pradini Rahalintar 22214003