Environmentally friendly technical plant oils as the base for emulsion drilling fluids

The paper is devoted to comprehensive studies of the physicochemical properties of emulsion drilling fluids (DFs) based on technical vegetable oil with an oil/water ratio of 70/30. The resulting solutions were compared with hydrocarbon-based solutions created according to the same recipe. Technical oils of plants growing in northern latitudes, such as rapeseed (Brássica nápus), linseed (Línum), and false flax (Camelina) were considered as a disperse medium. Using these oils as drilling fluid components is considered for the first time. Conventional drilling fluid components, such as low-viscosity synthetic oil and diesel fuel were also considered for comparison with vegetable oils. The rheological, filtration, antifriction and inhibitory properties of the resulting solutions were studied. The hazard class of drilling fluids was determined through biotesting. It has been shown that drilling fluids based on vegetable oils are not inferior in their properties, and in some parameters even superior to oil-based drilling fluids. This opens up a broad prospect for the use of vegetable oils as a replacement for the existing hydrocarbon-based drilling fluids, which will significantly reduce the environmental load when drilling with such process fluids, and will also solve the problem of cleaning and disposal of sludge waste.