Specific thermal capacity determination of bentonite drilling mud

This work aims to calculate experimentally the specific thermal capacity of the bentonite drilling mud, in view of its importance for energy studies. During drilling, mud is considered to be a heat exchange fluid used to cool the drilling tool, in particular its performance in high-pressure and -temperature wells. Despite the importance of this thermos-physical parameter, it does not exist in academic references and experimental manuals; therefore, this work succeeds in filling this gap. The thixotropic criterion of the fluid studied required a change in the agitation mechanism of the Joule effect adiabatic calorimeter used to carry out this work, from a manual agitation system to an automatic agitating system, to maintain the homogeneity of its texture and ensure a uniform distribution of temperature during the experiments. The comparison between the experimental and theoretical specific thermal capacity values of drilling mud in the three investigated cases gives an extremely low standard error of no more than ± 0.05, which proves the accuracy of this thermo-physical value. The texture of the mud stays homogeneous with each experience, which proves the effectiveness of the modification made to the stirrer of this calorimeter, from which it can also be used for other thixotropic fluids.