Presentation Profile
EGA-Pyrolysis GC/MS Analysis of Polyamide Emulsifier in Oil Base Drilling Fluids
Currently Scheduled: 10/16/2024 - 10:00 AM
Room: South Lobby
Main Author
Min Huang - Baker Hughes
Abstract:
Emulsion stability is a critical property in designing and evaluating the Non-Aqueous Drilling Fluid design to drill oil and gas exploration. Drilling Fluids are heavy viscous fluids used in oil and gas drilling operations. The main functions of drilling fluids are to remove cuttings from the well and to control formation pressure during the drilling operation. It also maintains the wellbore stability to avoid hole collapse and minimize the formation damage to maximize the hydrocarbon recovery. There are two major types of drilling fluids: Water base fluids and Non-Aqueous Fluids (NAF’s)
A typical oil-based drilling fluid consists of the base oil, di-valent based brine, lime, emulsifiers, viscosifiers, and filtration control additives with a weighting material. Emulsifiers are chemicals to create and maintain water-in-oil emulsions in NAF’s. TOFA (tall Oil fatty acid) based emulsifiers are the most widely used commercially available emulsifiers, which show excellent emulsion stability even at harsh conditions such as high temperature and high pressure at minimal concentration with a range of 8.0-14.0 pounds per barrel (ppb). The majority of the emulsifier is adsorbed by solids in NAF. This solid could be on weighting agents (major potion consumption), viscosifiers, fluid loss controlling agents and bridging particles, which are used to formulate NAF, that contribute to their effective dispersion in the solution and control fluid rheology and fluid loss to the formation. The adsorption process is found to be sensitive to the emulsifier concentration, solids mineralogy, wetting agent and temperature.
One of the emulsifiers is based on the condensation reaction of TOFA with polyamine such as diethylenetriamine (DETA), triethylenetetramine (TETA), or tetraethylenepentamine (TEPA) yields amidoamines of TOFA (tall oil fatty acid polyamides).
R-COOH + H2N-CH2-CH2-NH-R’ (DETA, TETA or TEPA) → R-CO-NH-CH2-CH2-NH-R’ + H2O
In this study, a micro-furnace multi-shot Pyrolyzer (Frontier) and GC/MS (Shimadzu) were used to characterize the type of emulsifiers present in NAF. The technique combines EGA (Evolving Gas Analysis) and Pyrolysis GC/MS to analyze the type of base oil (as solvent) used in the emulsifier, the type of fatty acid, amines, and some other additives used in the emulsifier, and the final product of polyamide. This innovative technique helps to identify the emulsifier type quicker and easier.
