Experimental investigation of Henna powder as a novel additive to the drilling fluid

Many problems encountered during oil well drilling are attributed to loss of liquid from the drilling fluid to permeable formations and forming mud cake on the well bore wall. In order to avoid this problem, chemiacal and polymer materials are used , that can be hazardous for environment . in this paper we have used henna powder as an additive for investigating its effects on rheological properties of drilling mud and fluid loss at the scale of laboratory. for this purpose we prepared a usual bentonite mud, after measuring its rheological behavior and its fluid loss through filter press we addes henna powder with different weights to it and we remeasured its properties . the results of this experiment with filter press apparatus shows that henna powder has a positive effect on formaiton of thin and stable mud cake and also decrease the fluid loss with increasing it to the base mud. moreover the henna powder considerably decreases the corrosivity and will change the rheological properties of drilling mud. the results of this research imply that henna powder can be used as a suitable alternative of starch altough its viscosity is lower than starch but henna is comparable to starch in fluid loss controlling by adding more powder . being natural with no environmental problems is the other feature with our additive.

کلیدواژه ها:

drilling mud ، fluid loss ، henna powder ، filter press ، corrosion.