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U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Well plugging by drilling muds

Conference ·
OSTI ID:5459209
 [1]
  1. Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Washington State Univ., Pullman, WA (US)
Suspended solid particles are introduced into wellbores during various operations such as the use of drilling muds. These particles in drilling muds can build a filter cake on the wall of the bore and migrate to the porous formation immediately adjacent to the wellbore. In either case, the entrainment and deposition of particles cause an observed decline in productivity of some wells or increase of injection pressures. It is the objective of this work to develop a practical mathematical approach to the formation of a filter cake at the face of the wellbore. This is achieved first by defining and identifying all relevant mechanisms which contribute to the cake formation and particle migration in porous media. Then, conservation principles expressed in terms of quantifications of these mechanisms lead to a system consisting of governing partial differential equations. These equations are averaged to obtain analytical expressions to predict the cake thickness as a function of solid concentration, injection rate, or filtrate rate, and time. The results are compared with experimental data obtained by some researchers. Excellent match is obtained between the theoretical and experimental results.
OSTI ID:
5459209
Report Number(s):
CONF-880348--
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English