Effect of fluid additives on rock drilling

Drilling is a very dominant operation in all rock cutting industries, namely, mining, petroleum, natural gas and civil engineering. The objective of this study is to understand the behaviour of rock drillability by mean of penetration rate of bit, with concentration of 10 ppm of carboxymethyl cellulose, guar gum, polyacrylamide polymer additives to drilling fluid. A total of four different type of drilling fluids were used to compare and identify the best drilling fluid for chunar sandstone. For this research work, a laboratory drill setup was fabricated to study the effect of various rotary drilling machine parameters on overall drilling performance. Outcome of the experiment is discussed in terms of rate of penetration. It was found that at 10 ppm concentration, the performance of guar gum and carboxymethyl cellulose is almost same and much better then that of polyacrylamide.