Estudo da dissolução de partículas de NaCl em fluidos não-Newtonianos

Abstract

The drilling of wells in salt layers faces major challenges in Brazil’s oil industry. Drilling in such layers requires the development of new technologies and operational procedures to make the process economically viable. One of the main problems is the dissolution of the salt layers in water-based drilling fluids. An uncontrolled dissolution presents a potential risk for the operation and can cause abrupt changes in the properties of the fluids. The main objective of this work was to study the effects of the dissolution of sodium chloride particles in non-Newtonian fluids containing xanthan gum. The study was divided into three parts, rheological experiments, kinetics experiments in a mixing tank and a mathematical modeling. The rheological experiments aimed at studies of the effect of the addition of saline particles on the rheology of non-Newtonian fluids, the effect of the concentration of suspended particles in the rheology of saturated fluids and the effect of the size of suspended particles in the rheology of saturated fluids. The Einstein equation was used to calculate the apparent viscosity of saturated fluids, taking into account the effect of the concentration of salt particles in suspension. The experiments in the mixing tank aimed at the study of the kinetics of dissolution with time in different operating conditions. Fluids were prepared using different concentrations of xanthan gum and different initial concentrations of sodium chloride. The effects of the viscosifier concentration and the initial concentration gradient were evaluated. A phenomenological model was used to represent the dissolution process, which provides the variation of the concentration of the fluid, the variation of the volume fraction of solids, the variation of the particles mean diameter and the variation of the interfacial mass transfer area as a function of time. In the rheology studies, it was verified that the addition of sodium chloride to the non-Newtonian fluid, in the studied conditions, increased the apparent viscosity of the solution. The increase of the concentration of suspended sodium chloride particles increased the apparent viscosity of the suspensions. The increase of the size of the suspended particles decreased the apparent viscosity of the suspension. Statistical tests were made in order to evaluate the statistical relevance of the performed studies. In the kinetics study, the convective mass transfer coefficient was estimated and simulations were made for the other variables of the process. The estimations showed that the xanthan gum concentration in the fluid and the initial sodium chloride concentration in the fluid affect the mass transfer coefficient. The average relative error observed for the simulations was 2,2%.