A New Viscosity and Density Sensing Platform for Drilling Automation

During drilling operations, measurements of drilling fluid/mud viscosity and density provide key information to ensure safe operations (e.g., maintain wellbore integrity) and improve the rate of penetration (e.g., maintain proper hole cleaning). Nowadays, these measurements are still performed manually by using a calibrated funnel viscometer and a weight balance, as stipulated by current American Petroleum Institute (API) standards. In this study, we introduce an automated viscosity/density measurement system based on an electromechanical tuning fork resonator. The system allows for continuous measurements as fast as several times per second in a compact footprint, allowing it to be deployed in tanks or pipelines and/or gathering data from multiple sensors in the mud circulation system. The streams of data produced were broadcasted to a nearby computer allowing for live monitoring of the viscosity and density. The results obtained by the in-tank system in five wells were in good agreement with the standard reference measurements from the mud logs. Here, we describe the development and testing of the tool as well as general guidelines for integration into a rig edge-computing system for real-time analytics and detection of operational problems and drilling automation.