Fundamentals and Physical Principles for Drilled Cuttings Transport—Cuttings Bed Sedimentation and Erosion

Camilo Pedrosa, Arild Saasen and Jan David Ytrehus
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Camilo Pedrosa: Department of Chemical Engineering, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, 7491 Trondheim, Norway
Arild Saasen: Department of Energy and Petroleum Engineering, University of Stavanger, 4030 Stavanger, Norway
Jan David Ytrehus: SINTEF Industry, 7031 Trondheim, Norway

Energies, 2021, vol. 14, issue 3, 1-13

Abstract: The increasing necessity of challenging wellbore structures and drilling optimization for improved hole cuttings cleaning has been growing along time. As a result, operator companies have been researching and applying different hole cleaning techniques. Some of these are applied as traditional rules of thumb but are not always suitable for the new and up-coming challenges. This may result in inefficient hole cleaning, non-productive times, pipe stocking and low rate of penetration (ROP), among other problems. Here are presented some results and improvements for hole cleaning optimization obtained by the different research groups. The different authors mainly focus on specific cuttings transport parameters and sometimes combination of some of them. For this reason, there has not been a study that takes into account all of the different factors at the same time to accurately predict the cuttings bed height, formation and erosion, critical fluid velocity and properties and other key parameters. Consequently, there is a lack of understanding about the relation between different factors, such as the cohesiveness of the drilled cuttings with the different interstitial drilling fluids within the cuttings-bed. This relation can be analyzed establishing a wet-granular approach to obtain more efficient cuttings transport mechanism in challenging conditions.

Keywords: cuttings removal; hole cleaning; drilling fluids (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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