Rheology of Cement Mixed with Hollow Microspheres

Hollow microspheres cement is lightweight cement solution that is designed to have the highest strength ratio and lowest permeability of any cement design at a given slurry density, and rapid compressive strength to reduce Wait on Cement (WOC). Hollow microspheres used to reduce hydrostatic pressure on weak formations and to cement lost circulation zones. Hollow microspheres are produced from a mixture of liquid sodium silicate glass and a foaming agent [2]. For example, carbonates, bicarbonates, sulphates, nitrates, and acids are used as foaming agent. The mass is then dried and crushed. In this study, the focuses are mainly cementing the intermediate and production casing in a single stage using low density cement that was based on hollow microspheres. The objectives of this work is to analysis low density cement in High Pressure High Temperature (HPHT) formation which also includes the lab tests such compressive strength, fluid loss and thickening time test. Hollow microspheres cement is a High Strength, Low Density (HSLD) cement system which suggested for increasing primary cementing success in steam injected, low fracture gradient areas. It is incompressible cement which provides consistent and predictable density from the top of the borehole to the bottom. The hollow microsphere cement system is HSLD acknowledged as a feasible solution because conventional cement designs lose the formation. Advantages of using hollow microspheres cement are that it gives an excellent mud displacement, enhanced mechanical properties, good strength to density ratio and long lasting zonal isolation. A programme is developed using software to test the parameters such as temperature, pressure and density of the cement. Although the microspheres operations can be very complex, hollow microspheres cement has many applications that can justify the increase complexity. Cement slurry using hollow microspheres can be applied in high permeability formations, poorly consolidated formations and HPHT formations.