Investigation on Lost Circulation Materials (LCM) by Palm Oil Fronds

This report discuss about the method of the invention and several studies
about lost circulation material. The objective on this project is to proposed palm oil
fronds as drilling fluid additive to control the lost circulation during the drilling
program. Malaysia is the second largest of exporter palm oil in the world and by this
invention the abandon of palm oil fronds can be used as lost circulation material. The
report discusses of the lost circulation problems, the lost circulation materials and the
characterization of the parameters of drilling fluid. It also confers the methodologies
for LCM to resolve severe lost circulation problems and designing the mud samples,
the mud densities, the rheological tests, and the filtration performance volume tests.
Tests have been conducted in accordance with the API 13 B and the related
equipments were mixer, mud balance and viscometer. Properties measured through
this experiment such as density, plastic viscosity, yield point, 10 seconds and 10
minutes gel strength and filtration rate. The experiment shows that, palm oil fronds
have characteristic as lost circulation material as comparing with nut plug and corn
cob. This report present the data collection, analysis and discussion of results obtain.