Erosion Corrosion of Drill Pipe During Drilling Operations

Abstract The presence of high rotating speeds and weights, the corrosiveness of water-based drilling muds, and high-speed mud with embedded cuttings, exposing drill string components to severe wear and corrosion that reduce their service life. The drill pipe erosion, abrasive wear and corrosion depend on properties of drilled cuttings and drilling fluids. Any variation in these properties leads to change in pipe degradation rate. There is a need to study the effect of individual factors, for expecting the drill pipe series life and to find a solution to this challenging problem. This research aims to evaluate the influence of real rock cuttings sizes and concentration as well as we investigate the effect of base fluid type on the erosion-corrosion rate. Actual drilled cuttings have been sieved to get three sizes of erodent cuttings; namely, 0.841 to 3.3 mm. Experiments are done with three sand concentrations (5%, 10% and 15%). The rate of erosion-corrosion of the drill pipe specimens is measured as the loss of weight per unit surface area per unit time under the dynamic action of solid particles. The eroded surfaces of the specimens are examined using Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) to visualise the impact of the drill cuttings at various conditions. It is seen that the rate of corrosion/erosion decreases with the increase of drilled cuttings concentration. Also, high erosion-corrosion rate is detected in situation of large drill cuttings particles. In this research, we explored a novel simple technique to simulate pipe erosion-corrosion in a reservoir-like environment. Furthermore, this paper proposed a new approach to control drill pipe erosion-corrosion by using SiO2-nanofluid.