An Experimental Investigation of Rheological and Free Water of Foam Cement System

Qassim M. Sayed; Hassan A.  Abdul Hussein; Ahmed K.  Hassan

doi:10.52716/jprs.v15i4.978

Authors

Qassim M. Sayed Department of Petroleum Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Baghdad
Hassan A. Abdul Hussein 1Department of Petroleum Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Baghdad
Ahmed K. Hassan Petroleum Research and Development Center, Ministry of Oil, Baghdad, Iraq

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.52716/jprs.v15i4.978

Keywords:

Foamed cement, Foam quality, Stability, Free water, Rheological Properties.

Abstract

Foamed cement system is one of the types of lightweight cement used in the process of cementing oil wells in weak formations which is exposed to lost circulation problems. This study aims to determine the closest rheological model to the foamed cement system and the extent of the effect of the presence of foam and its concentration on the plastic viscosity and stability of the foamed system as well as free water. We conducted experiments on a sample of base cement and several samples of foamed cement, a foam quality (injected air as a percentage) of 15, 25, 36, and 47 is injected into the base cement slurry to obtain different densities of foamed cement of 1.6, 1.4, 1.2, and 1.0 g/cc respectively. For selecting the best rheological model purpose, an absolute average percentage error (EAAP) criterion and R2 of four rheological models (Bingham plastic, Power law, Herschel-Bulckley, and Casson) is applied. The results indicated that the Herschel-Bulckley model exhibited the closest rheological model with the lowest value of (EAAP) around 5% and R2 greater than 0.989. In addition, an increase of the foam quality will improve the plastic viscosity and at the same time the stability of the foam cement system increased, as the volumetric percentage of released microbubbles decreased from 5.3% to 4.3% when the foam quality increased from 15 to 47. The free water for base cement slurry was 2.08% and disappeared completely when foam quality increased above 15%. Experimental data demonstrated a direct correlation between foam quality with plastic viscosity, stability of foamed cement and free water, where enable the establishment of a reliable model for predicting cement performance and use in cementing operations of wells suffering from lost circulation problems. The compressive strength of foamed cement was calculated for several densities in the master's thesis and excellent values were obtained, higher than other types of lightweight cement, and were published in another research. Foam cement is a new system in oil well cementing operations that has not been applied in Iraq at present. It is important to study it in advance to identify its rheological behavior as well as the problem of free water, which is a burden in cementing horizontal or inclined oil wells.

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