RESEARCH ON EVALUATING MICRO SIZE PARTICLE MATERIAL OF JATROPHA AS FLUID LOSS REDUCER IN SYNTHETIC HTHP DRILLING FLUIDS

This paper would be focusing on the potential of the plant seed called jatropha which is abundance in Malaysia to be used as fluid loss reducer agent. The Jatropha material would be mixed in drilling mud and then will be tested under high pressure and high temperature (HPHT) condition. The better concentration of Jatropha material for better drilling fluid stability would be found and then investigation on the rheology of the drilling fluid which includes the fluid loss would be done.
However, there is this new phenomenon that involves researching on potentials of Jatropha materials to be used in oil and gas industries. Jatropha is a plant that produces high oil content in its seed. Other than its use in biodiesel, it also has value in other area such as medicine and pharmaceutical. However, the potential use of the Jatropha in oil and gas industries only has reached the drilling fluid such that the oil from the seed is substituting the traditional diesel oil based mud. On the other hand, by extracting the oil, the seed still has its remaining which is the solid part. Thus, it will be more beneficial if the remaining of the Jatropha seed can also be used as an additive in drilling mud such as fluid loss reducer.
The Jatropha seeds would be first undergo drying process in order to reduce its humidity as possible. This is done in order to make the ball milling process easier and the outcome would be as fine powder. If the seeds are wet, the outcome would be sticky and hard to be used for mud mixing. Once the sample is used as additive in oil based mud, the mud rheology would be checked. Then, the sample will be hotrolled for 16 hours in order to make it a matured mud. After that, it will be used for filter press test which would be HPHT and LPLT filter press test. The fluid loss produced will be observed and be compared to commercial fluid loss reducer which is in this case is CONFI-TROL.
The Jatropha shells that has been ball milled for 24 hours shows the best result among the Jatropha samples. In addition, it is also better in fluid reducing compared to CONFI-TROL which is 30% less fluid loss for HPHT and 50% less fluid loss for LPLT.