Characterization of drilling fluids filtration through integrated laboratory experiments and CFD modeling

The filtration experiments have always been the focal point for drilling researchers. The physical, chemical, and mechanical behavior of drilling fluid is critical for successful drilling operation. In order to characterize it, permeability plugging test is carried out. But there are certain limitations of this experiment. As the actual field condition cannot be simulated at laboratory scale experiments, there is a need to replicate the same laboratory experiments in numerical models with significant accuracy. After achieving, the desired accuracy of this numerical model, the upscaling of the same numerical model can be used to predict the behavior of drilling fluid with significant accuracy. The current study uses our past laboratory experiments and a genuine effort has been made to model the permeability plugging test using Fluent package of ANSYS. This paper includes the procedure and results on filtrate and filter-cake characteristics obtained during the laboratory experiments to validate the numerical model. First of all, a comparison between existing numerical models and our current model has been studied to verify the accuracy of our model. Then the model has been extended to characterize the laboratory conditions. Good agreement was observed in comparison of the simulation's results with experimental data. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.