Laboratory Investigation of the Effect of Ginger as an Additive in Drilling Fluid Formulation

Student: Kennedy Uwaezuoke (Project, 2025)
Department of Petroleum Engineering
University of Uyo, Akwa Ibom State

Abstract

In the exploration of hydrocarbon, a good mud program necessitates a successful petroleum drilling operation. The design and production of drilling fluid in Nigeria’s oil and gas sector over the years has been faced with the challenges of either importing the materials to produce or in other case importing already prepared drilling mud. But there is need to develop cheap local materials to substitute the use of foreign materials as they are considered expensive. This study formulates an alternative water-based mud, consisting of ginger as local additive, to aid improve the drilling mud properties and thus compete favorably with imported standard additives. The study result shows that ginger acts as a good weighting material in the formulation of drilling fluids with an increase from 8.4 ppg to 8.7 ppg. Secondarily, with a mud pH value increase from an initial value of 8.1 to 11.5, its alkaline nature in drilling fluids, help reduce corrosion and extend the life of drilling equipment. However, it was also observed that the filtration control characteristics obtained didn’t match the API standard requirements for drilling fluids. This indicates that ginger cannot be recommended for drilling operations presently, until further research is carried out on how to improve this yield value.

Keywords
Drilling fluid Water-based mud Weighting agent pH enhancer Filtration control Ginger Cost Mud properties Local additive API standard
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