Drilling mud is a multi-phase fluid that is used in the petroleum drilling process. Bentonite is the most important constituent of drilling mud; it endows the drilling mud with its rheological behaviors, such as viscosity, yield stress, and shear thinning. The process of manufacturing microscale bentonite at the nanoscale level is very promising for commercializing nano-based drilling mud. In contrast to the conventional method using the impeller, bentonite was manufactured in its nanoparticle state in the present work through ultrasonic and homogenizer processes in the solution state. In case of the ultrasonic process, the viscosity increase in the low shear rate region before and after processing of the 5 wt% bentonite-based mud and the rheological properties in the presence of polymer additive were compared. In case of the homogenizer process, the rheological properties of 3 wt% bentonite-based mud employed through the homogenizer process and 5 wt% mud prepared generally were compared. Both processes reported improvement of rheological properties, in which shear thinning behavior strongly occurred when particle size decreased through FE-SEM, TEM image analysis, and particle size analyzer. A regularized Herschel-Bulkley model suitable for rheological quantitative explanation of drilling mud including yield stress was selected. The homogenizer process has the potential to be applied in the petroleum drilling industry for large-scale production, and the mechanism was confirmed by numerical analyses. In conclusion, we presented a simple and easy-to-apply process to rapidly produce nano-based drilling mud.

钻井泥浆是一种多相流体，用于石油钻井过程。膨润土是钻井泥浆中最重要的成分；它赋予钻井泥浆流变行为，如粘度、屈服应力和剪切稀化。在纳米级制造微米级膨润土的过程对于纳米钻井泥浆的商业化非常有前途。与使用叶轮的传统方法相比，在目前的工作中，通过超声波和均质机工艺在溶液状态下以纳米颗粒状态制造膨润土。在超声波处理的情况下，比较了 5 wt% 膨润土基泥浆处理前后低剪切速率区域的粘度增加以及聚合物添加剂存在下的流变学特性。在均质机工艺的情况下，比较了通过均化工艺采用的 3 wt% 膨润土基泥浆与通常制备的 5 wt% 泥浆的流变性能。这两个过程都报告了流变性能的改善，其中通过 FE-SEM、TEM 图像分析和粒度分析仪，当粒度减小时，剪切稀化行为强烈发生。选择了适用于包括屈服应力在内的钻井泥浆流变学定量解释的正则化 Herschel-Bulkley 模型。均质器工艺具有应用于石油钻井工业大规模生产的潜力，其机理已通过数值分析得到证实。总之，我们提出了一种简单易用的工艺来快速生产纳米基钻井泥浆。