Optimizing the drilling operation is a crucial part of any field development. One of the important aspects of this task is to improve the management and reliability of the drilling fluid measurement equipment. Mud balance is one of those equipment as shown in the figure below.

Figure 1: Mud balance

In order to achieve this, providing a detailed understanding and review of the mud balance is of a high priority. In this report, the progress of the aforementioned task is detailed.

OBJECTIVES

The aim of this project is to provided a detailed literature review about the mud balance including its compnents, applications and most of the other details related to its functionality. This work is being done as a part of the the project “Improving management and reliability of drilling fluid measurement equipment”. The target of conducting this review is to provide a deep understanding of the previously described topics related to the mud balance in order to support the output of the project.

JUSTIFICATION AND METHODOLOGY

Due to COVID19 limitation, the evaluation will be limited to technical rather than experimental. As a result, no lab work is planned in this project. As a result, extensive research on the material provided on the internet with regards to the mud balance is conducted.

The research should include public data available in petroleum specialized website, specific data in the product sheets available from providers and finally oublished scientific papers with regards to the studied subject.

The adopted methodology to achieve the target was getting familiarized with the drilling fluid and its measurement in general. This was followed by detailed research and analysis of the mud balance components and how it is working. The outputs will be reported in the results section.

PROJECT SCOPE

Generally, the major deliverables of this project is a weekly presentation including all the updates and outputs achieved. Additionally, the key milestones are finalizing the individual parts of each member of team, mergin the outputs to formulate the full project and finally delivering the final report to address the project objectives.

Specifically for this part of the project, the scope is understand the mud balance components, how it works, its types and measurement, how the pressurezed measurments is done. This is the plan up to date and to be increased as the project progress.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The mud balance itself is composed mainly of a cup woth a lid, a steel ruler marked with the density scale, a rider which is a sliding weight to measure the density when the ruler is leveled. The leveling is done by a bubble chamber that assists the process.

Figure 2: Mud balance components

Summary of the other details like measurements units and types had also been conducted. Sample of the measurement of a 12 ppg mud is shown below:

The main functionality of the mud balance is to masure the density of the drilling fluid.

Figure 3: Mud weight measurement example

Severeal models are provided in the market rather than the conventional style, those are offered by different providers. Sample of this is provided in the following:

Figure 4: Mud weight models

With regards to types, most of the mud weights are not pressurized, however, pressurized ones are available in the industry. The pressureized example is shown in the below figure

Figure 5: Pressurized mud balance example

REFLECTION

General review about the mud balance was done using different sources including general and petroleum related sites. Additionally, data sheets and specifications published from several providers and available for the undustrial public use. The advanced and detailed searching techniques is the most valuable thing learnt to date as it gives the researcher the ability to evaluate any studied topic, saying this, a lot of learning outcomes is achieved with regards to the mud balance. The major concerns to reach the possible outcome is the non-availability of the various published material regarding the mud balance. Such problems are tackled by checking the product sheet from service providers selling such products.

I think I received a lot of benefit from PBL. I really enjoyed it because we read up and then share with each other. We speak in our own language. It's very different when we start talking to each other and check things out together. PBL requires us to work in groups and to find things out for ourselves, identify the learning issues and then teach each other.

PBL involves a combination of students working in small groups with a facilitator and independent research. Each group works through a predefined patient case, discussing the information provided and implied, exploring possible diagnoses, suggesting investigations and treatments, and identifying the research they need to undertake to be able to resolve the case.

Currently, the updates of the two presentations is being written as part of the progress report. The next task planned is to conduct a review of the pressureized mud balance in details and how does it work.