Modification and Application of a Plant Gum as Eco-Friendly Drilling Fluid Additive

To enhance solubility and the performance of a plant gum (from south peach tree of China, SP gum) as a drilling fluid additive, we explored the potential of Modified SP (MSP) gum by modifying it with epichlorohydrin. The modification conditions, such as the mass ratio of the crosslinking agent, pH and temperature, were optimized and the results show that 56.40 g/100g mass ratio of the crosslinking agent to SP gum with pH=10 at the temperature of 50 degrees C lead to the Modified SP (MSP) gum showed the well performance in the water based drilling fluids. It was discovered that drilling fluids modified with 0.5% wt MSP demonstrated more excellent rheology and lower filtration than that of SP treated drilling fluids, which should be contributed to the good clay inhibition obtained from swelling experiment and high inhibitive to the hydration and swell of the mud supported by mud ball immersing experiments.