The Application of Barite Powder in Drilling Industry

2021-07-02

With the exploration of oil fields, the technology of oil field drilling industry is demanding more specialty and refinement, and the drilling workload has also increased substantially. Drilling is a systematic engineering, which is a multi-professional, multi-type joint operation, using a variety of equipment, tools and materials. At the same time, it is the continuous work of multi-procedures. And the construction projects are quite complex.

Oil industry has production risk, the state has done comprehensive work on oil field safety management, but there are still accidents. Owing to the oil industry is unstable, so as long as there is a problem in one link, accidents may occur at any time. It is well known that barite powder is an additive in drilling industry. In oil fields, the requirements are higher, which is determined by the characteristics of petroleum. In the long-term practice and theoretical research, it is found that the fineness of barite powder is very strict.

In the process of oil drilling, the role of circulating mud is mainly to prevent oil well self-blowout by controlling the temperature of drill bit and cleaning the debris of drill bit. Because the circulating mud can better take away debris generated by drill bit in the cutting process, and play the role of sealing the hole wall and lubricating the drill pipe. But in some special circumstances, If circulating mud is difficult to balance with underground oil and gas forces, it is necessary to add barite powder to drilling fluid to improve the mixing density of circulating mud, so that it can also play a regulating role in the case of high formation pressure. Generally, barite powder should be controlled in density (> 4.2g/cm) and fineness (> 200 mesh (> D97) barium sulfate content (> 90%).

However, in order to improve the rheological properties better and settlement stability of drilling fluid, micro-powder barite with particle size (D90) 5 micron was prepared. The performances of extended-reach water-based drilling fluids and deep-well oil-based drilling fluids were evaluated respectively. Compared with API barite-weighted drilling fluids, laboratory experimental results show that water-based drilling fluids and oil-based drilling fluids weighted with micro-powder barite and API barite have lower plastic viscosities and higher dynamic shear force, which can significantly reduce the equivalent circulating pressure consumption of drilling fluids, and extreme pressure lubrication system in water-based drilling fluids. The number of oil-based drilling fluids can be reduced by more than 8%, and the settlement stability of the high density oil-based drilling fluids aggravated can be better. Therefore, fine barite is an ideal heavy material for extended reach wells and high temperature and pressure.

In order to study the influence of micro-powder barite on drilling industry, some customers try to use micro-powder barite in drilling industry and apply it. For example, XZM221, which was sold to Mexico, was required by customers at 5um D97. At that time, according to customers’ requirements, the XZM series of medium-speed micro-grinding products were also recommended to customers. Customers feedback are also satisfactory.

The XZM series medium-speed ultrafine mill is the production of the industrial grinding machine which has been accumulated for more than 20 years It has absorbed the technical essence of the powder equipment at home and abroad, such as Germany and Japan. After many innovations and tests, a highly efficient and low consumption ultrafine powder processing equipment has been designed, which fills up the blank of ultrafine powder processing and has successfully replaced the traditional air mill, ball mill. The equipment has the advantages of superior performance, stable quality, simple operation and convenient maintenance. It has greatly improved the added value. Obviously, as an ideal equipment for micro-powder processing, the economic benefit is remarkable.

The mill is suitable for processing the low and intermediate hardness brittle materials which are non-flammable and non-explosive, such as calcium carbonate, bentonite, talc ,mica ,barite, gypsum and graphite and so on. So far, it has been widely applied in paint, paper making, pigment ,rubber ,plastic, filler, cosmetics, chemical supplies and many other industrial fields.

The technical advantages of the XZM series medium-speed ultrafine mill

1. It features high efficiency and low energy consumption .with the capacity more than twice that of jet mills but the energy consumption lower by 30%
2. The rollers and ring are forged from special material which increases the durability by several times
3. The grinding chamber has no bearing screw, and is able to work stably free of vibration after balance treatment
4. The efficient vertical turbine powder classifier can achieve high efficiency, accurate cutting size and no spillover of coarse powder.
5. Frequency-conversion control, convenient for the adjustment control , with the one-time finished productsD97 < 5um.
6. Automatic feedback with fast and stable conversion of finished products; intelligent control , saving labor costs.
7. The efficient double powder collecting method of powder collectors and pulse dust collectors is able to achieve good effect in dust collection, which is far higher than the international standard.
8. The optimized sound insulation room and muffler can effectively prevent the spread of equipment noise.