Slurry Loop Project
During drilling operations, transportation of the cuttings, which is produced due to the rotation of the bit and shearing the rock, to the surface is an important parameter to optimize the drilling efficiency and reduce the non productive time (NPT).
The cuttings travel from the bottom of the wellbore, which can reach to over 10,000 ft when at the reservoir interval, through the annulus, the distance between the outside of the drillstring and the wellbore wall, to the surface. Challenges include the variation in velocity of the particles due to their different shape, size and density as well as hitting each other when travelling upward. This makes it difficult to determine which depth the cuttings belong to.
About Slurry Loop Project
The SLP team will be designing a slurry loop to study the cuttings transportation in the annulus space and understand the effect of the cuttings geometry and density as well as the drilling mud rheological properties and flow rate on different type of the flow profiles that may form in the annulus including: homogenous or heterogeneous suspension, suspension and moving bed, moving bed, moving and stationary beds, dune movement, boycott movement and stationary bed. Different instruments to measure the flow properties and cuttings characteristics will be installed to extract data for the analysis and interpretation purposes.
Project Team Progress Notes
Each week the team would meet to plan and execute the project. They kept detailed notes about their progress which you can review below. They presented their work at the 2018 Senior Design Expo.
January 2018
- Kick off and review project objectives
- Visit planned lab area that will host slurry loop
- Measure housing dimensions
- Determine dimensions of slurry loop
- Create calendar of events
- Research similar projects
February 2018
- Discuss piping, motor/pump, tank volume (sand, water, additive, mixer)
- Schedule up to purchase of materials
- Propose piping dimensions
- Discussed schematic drawing of loop
- Review changes/modifications
- Present solutions to problems with annulus design
- Construct basic schematic for slurry loop including pipe dimensions, testing instruments, annulus, tank sizing
- Run calculations to see if gifted pump will meet slurry loop designs
- Discuss weight of slurry and flow rates
- Finalize dimensions for piping including annulus space, drilling piping, hoses, fittings/converters
- Finish schematic for mechanical engineers to construct slurry loop in online software
- Research additives and sand
- Petroleum engineers visit LSU campus for PetroBowl
- Mechanical engineers start designing first steps on ANSYS
- Discuss particle size and concentrations
- Finish budget estimate for build
March 2018
- Finalize pipe sizing and annulus space
- Start pricing for acrylic, PVC and steel pipes
- Contact mechanical engineers for centralizer
- Create small group of machine component design lab based on centralizer
- Seek out another mechanical engineer to aid in speeding up design in ANSYS
- Contact personnel in EERC on possible usage of a tube-diaphragm pump
- Discuss needed parameters for contacting an electrician
- Finalize storage unites for additives and water
- Update entire parties of progression
- Discuss pressure transducer
- Submit project request
- Continue design of CAD model
- Update from mechanical engineers on centralizer design on Inventor
- Start construction of presentation for cost analysis
- Contact companies for quotes on acrylic, pressure transducers and other equipment
- Contact electrician
- Discuss possibility of incorporating Dr. Ling future project adaption to SLP
- Discuss budget
- Review for presentation
- Final cost analysis
April 2018
- Continued work on centralizer
- Discuss early stages of purchasing equipment
- Meet with mechanical engineers on centralizer and discuss thoughts/concerns
- Create outline for purchases
- Acrylic pipe arrives
- Metal base arrives
- Mark segments for future cuttings/welding
- Present SLP project at Senior Design Expo
