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Australian Energy Producers Journal Australian Energy Producers Journal Society
Journal of Australian Energy Producers
RESEARCH ARTICLE

Drilling fluid waste treatment using polysaccharide- grafted copolymers

K. K. Chandan A and G. P. Karmakar A B
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations

A Department of Mining Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur 721302, INDIA.

B Corresponding author. Email: gpkarmakar@mining.iitkgp.ac.in

The APPEA Journal 59(1) 34-46 https://doi.org/10.1071/AJ18229
Submitted: 4 December 2018  Accepted: 19 February 2019   Published: 17 June 2019

Abstract

A large amount of drilling fluid waste is produced as effluents during exploration and production of oil and gas. Such effluents need to be treated before their final disposal. Efficient coagulation/flocculation can reduce the total amount of disposed effluent, and both coagulation by inorganic salts and flocculation by synthetic flocculants are found to be very effective. The graft-copolymers-based flocculants were prepared using a potassium persulfate initiator solution made by grafting copolymerisation of polyacrylamide onto polysaccharide backbones (starch, guar gum and amylose) in our laboratory. The synthesised graft copolymers have been characterised using various instrumental methods of analysis. The effects of various synthetic flocculants and their concentrations have been studied in combination with the coagulants on coagulation/flocculation of bentonite-based drilling fluid waste have been studied. The effects of coagulant/flocculant dosage, electrolyte concentration and pH on the degree of flocculation of bentonite-based drilling fluid waste was investigated. It was observed that the increase in coagulant/flocculant dosage reduces the residual turbidity and improves the settling rate of the drilling fluid waste. At higher pH conditions, drilling fluid waste dispersions are highly flocculated and have high settling rates and low supernatant turbidity. The combined effect of salt concentration and coagulant/flocculant dosage improves the overall flocculation efficiency of the system.

Keywords: Bentonite-based drilling fluid waste, coagulation, flocculation, graft copolymerisation, turbidity.

Kunal Kishor Chandan completed his BTech in 2012 in Mechanical Engineering from Bengal College of Engineering and Technology, Durgapur, West Bengal and his MTech in 2014 from the Industrial Engineering Department from the National Institute of Technology, Jamshedpur. He is presently working on his PhD in Petroleum Engineering in the Department of Mining Engineering, IIT Kharagpur. His research is titled ‘Flocculation and Rheological Behaviour of Oilfield Drilling Mud using Polymers’.

G. P. Karmakar completed his MTechin Petroleum Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) (Indian School of Mines; ISM), Dhanbad, India and his PhD from IIT Kharagpur, India. After starting his career in 1984 at KDMIPE, ONGC, Dehradun, Dr Karmakar worked as a Faculty Member in the Department of Petroleum Engineering in IIT (ISM), Dhanbad, at Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Petroleum Technology, Raebareli and at the School of Petroleum Technology, Pandit Deendayal Petroleum University, Gadhinagar, India. He joined the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, as Total Chair Professor in Petroleum Engineering in the Department of Mining Engineering and is presently working as a Visiting Professor in the same department at the IIT, Kharagpur, India. He is the recipient of a UNESCO Scholarship (Institute of Petroleum and Gas, Ploiesti, Romania); German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) Fellowship (Friedrich Schiller University, Jena, Germany); British Commonwealth Fellowship (Imperial College, London, UK) and DAAD Fellowship (Lübeck University of Applied Sciences, Senftenberg, Germany). Dr Karmakar is a Member of the SPE (USA) and Lifetime Fellow of the Institution of Engineers (India). He is actively engaged in research in the areas of enhanced oil recovery using polymers and oilfield waste treatment using polymers. He has published more than 80 research papers in national and international journals and conferences. Dr Karmakar is a Member of the Technical Editorial Committee, SPE Reservoir Engineering and Evaluation, SPE, USA, and a Member of the Editorial Board, Research and Development in Material Science, Crimson Publishers, USA.


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