Effect of Nano silica in brine treated PAC/XC/ LV-CMC polymer Bentonite fluid system

Abstract

In this thesis the performance of Nano silica in polymer based bentonite fluid system was analysed. Several combination of Nano with salt and polymer types were formulated and tested. The effect of temperature, salt, polymer and Nano silica concentration was also investigated and discussed. The Nano silica treated system showed a variation of behaviour in presence of difference salt and polymers. It shows a viscosifying and a thinning effect when treated with Xanthan and PAC, respectively. After several attempts, this thesis work investigated an optimized nano silica blended system. The system is obtained by the addition of 2.5 g KCl + 0.25 g Nano silica + 0.2 g LV CMC + 0.3 g Xanthan XC in bentonite/H2O (25g/500g) system, which shows good performance in terms of filter loss and rheology. The viscoelastic properties of Nano-free reference system and Nano-treated system were also measured and compared. Further the borehole cleaning efficiency and the hydraulic of the formulated system were simulated and the result was compared with the Nano-free reference system.