Lubricity of Jatropha Oil Based Mud

One of the main functions of drilling mud is to lubricate the wellbore. Lubrication in wellbore during drilling operation are very important to avoid the drill strings in contact with the wellbore formation. If the drill string surface is in contact with the surface of wellbore formation, friction will occur and hence it can lead to wear of tools. The conventional oil based muds used in the industries nowadays have a lot of disadvantages such as expensive and pollute the environment. As an alternative, the Jatropha oil is introduced to make oil based mud that is cheaper and more environmental-friendly. The lubricity of Jatropha oil drilling mud was investigated using Multispecimen Wear Tester (MWT) which the equipment will simulates the friction between the rotations of drill string and the wellbore formation. The Multispecimen Wear Tester is used to get the coefficient of friction of Jatropha oil based mud. The result shows the Jatropha oil based mud have a high lubricity compared to the Saraline oil based mud. However, the rheology properties of the Jatropha oil based mud are not suitable to be used in the industry without being diluted because it has high value of plastic viscosity and yield point.