• Journal of the Korean Society of Industry Convergence
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• v.23 no.4_2
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• pp.617-626
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• 2020

The drilling mud is essentially used in oil and gas development. There are several roles of using the drilling mud, such as cleaning the bottomhole, cooling and lubricating the drill bit and string, transporting the cuttings to the surface, keeping and adjusting the wellbore pressure, and preventing the collapse of the wellbore. The fragments from rocks and micro-sized bubbles generated by the high pressure are mixed in the drilling mud. The systems to separate those mixtures and to keep the uniformly maintained quality of drilling mud are required. In this study, the simulation is conducted to verify the performance of the mud tank's agitation capacity. The primary role of the mud tank is the mixing of mud at the surface with controlling the mud condition. The container type is chosen as a mud tank pursuing efficient transport and better management of equipment. The single- and two-phase simulations about the agitation in the mud tank are performed to analyze and identify the inner flow behavior. The convergence of results is obtained for the vertical- and axis-direction velocity vector fields based on the grid-dependency tests. The mixing time analysis depending on the multiphase flow conditions indicates that the utilization of a two-stepped impeller with a smaller size provides less time for mixing. This study's results are expected to be utilized as the preliminary data to develop the mixing and integrating equipment of the onshore drilling mud system.

• The KSFM Journal of Fluid Machinery
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• v.17 no.6
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• pp.29-37
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• 2014

Non-Newtonian fluid mechanics takes charge of an important role in the oil industries. Especially in the oil well drilling process, the drilling fluid such as mud keeps the drill bit cool and clean during drilling, with suspending drill cuttings and lubricating a drill bit. The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of fluid mud rheological properties to predict different characteristics of non-Newtonian fluid in the mud mixing tank on offshore drilling platforms. In this paper, ANSYS fluent package was used for the simulation to solve the hydrodynamic force and to evaluate mud mixing time. Prediction of the power consumption and the pumping effectiveness has been presented with different operating fluid models as Newtonian and non-Newtonian fluid. The comparison between Newtonain mud model and non-Newtonian mud model is confirmed by the CFD simulation method of drilling mud mixing tank. The results present useful information for the design of the drilling mud mixing tanks and provide some guidance on the use of CFD tool for such non-Newtonian fluid flow.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.111-118
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• 2014

In drilling process of oil wells, the drilling fluid such as mud keeps the drill bit cool and clean during drilling, with suspending drill cuttings and lubricating a drill bit. In this paper, a commercial CFD package(ANSYS Fluent 15.0) was used to solve the hydrodynamic force and evaluate mud mixing time in the mud mixing tank on offshore drilling platforms. Prediction of power consumption in co-rotating and counter-rotating models has been compared with results of Nagata's correlation equation. This research shows the hydrodynamic effect inside the two phase mud mixing tank according to rotating directions(co-rotating and counter-rotating). These results, we can conclude that the co-rotating direction of the two shafts with mixing blade in the mud mixing tank can be a preferable in power consumption and mixing time reduction.