# Property of Modified Bovine Bone Glue as an Environmental Additive in Water-Based Drilling Fluids

## TL;DR

This paper introduces a modified bovine bone glue additive for water-based drilling fluids that improves performance and environmental compatibility.

## Contribution

The novel contribution is the development and evaluation of bromoethane-modified bovine bone glue as an environmentally friendly drilling fluid additive.

## Key findings

- Modified bone glue reduced sodium bentonite swelling from 50.2% to 38.2% and filtration loss from 30 mL to 12 mL.
- The additive maintained performance after 16 hours at 130°C, showing good temperature resistance.
- SEM and FT-IR analysis revealed that the additive adsorbs onto clay particles via functional groups like -OH and -COOH.

## Abstract

At present, animal
bone glue (BG) is being widely used in many
fields, but there are no studies reported on oilfield chemistry. In
this paper, an environmental water-based drilling fluids additive
named bromoethane-modified bone glue (BG) was developed by using bovine
bone glue and bromoethane as raw materials, anhydrous ethanol as solvent,
sodium hydroxide as alkaline hydrolysis agent, and sodium carbonate
as a system pH regulator. The inhibition, filtration performance,
and temperature resistance of BG were evaluated. Performance study
results show that the linear swelling rate of sodium bentonite (Na-MMT)
was decreased from 50.2% (in tap water) to 38.2% (in 4 wt % BG solutions),
and filtration loss was reduced from 30 mL (in tap water) to 12 mL
(in 5 wt % BG). Hot-rolling experiments show that the BG solution
still exhibits good performance even after 16 h × 130 °C.
The reasons for BG to achieve excellent performance were analyzed
through scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Fourier transform infrared
(FT-IR) spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction (XRD), ζ potential,
thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), and microstructure. The results
of SEM and FT-IR show that BG can fully dissolve in water and adsorb
on the surface of clay particles by relying on its own adsorption
functional groups such as −OH and −COOH. When 4% BG
was added, ζ potential analysis revealed that the clay particle
size declined by 0.502 μm, which indicated that BG can inhibit
clay hydration swelling dispersion.