Loss Circulation Material in Drilling Fluid

This report concerns on investigation on lost circulation materials (LCM) derived from
pineapple peel waste for drilling fluid formulation. The project mainly aims to study the
effectiveness of using pineapple peel waste as LCM additives to prevent the lost
circulation problem. The significant of using the pineapple peel waste is that it has the
lost circulation material characteristics to prevent the mud losses, environmentally
friendly and low cost. The work consists of developing a green LCM and optimizing
using innovative test methods to ensure that it meets the field criteria for addressing loss
circulation problems. Prior to that, equipments that have been identified to perform the
testing are multimixer, mud balance, FANN (Model 35A) viscometer, API filter press,
and Electrical Capacitance Tomography (ECT). Then the LCM will be prepared in a
range of particle size of 212 micron which fall in coarse grades and its amount was
variables used in the tests. Overall, the results shows that addition of pineapple peel
waste of 5% increases the viscosity about 20% but decreases the yield point about 21%,
the gel strength about 25% and the filtration rate about 6%. Moreover, the properties of
pineapple peel waste as LCM degrade the drilling mud performance by about 20% after
one month and it is identified that ECT sensor able to measure the permittivity
distribution of mud with LCM.