Using Hi-vis Sweep to Clean Hole while Drilling

Sweep is a mud which has higher rheology and/or more mud weight than current mud property. It
is used to carry cutting that set at low side of a wellbore and it is widely used for Sea water drilling.

These illustration show how sweep works.

Cutting at the low side of the well bore (image below)

Sweep is pumped (image below).

 Hole is clean (image below).

Note: In reality, the pipe is not in the exact center of the well but these illustrations are used to aid
the understanding of how sweeps works.

This is a real case which will show you how the sweep helps hole cleaning.

Information

Drilling fluid – sea water

Sweep property:

Funnel Viscosity +/- 100 sec

PV = 25

YP = 34

Density = 10.0 ppg

Hole angle = 59 degree

Sweep volume = 50 bbl

Formation = sand stone, clay stone, clay, trace carbonate

Drilling parameters before pumping sweep

Pick up = 300 klb

Rotate weight = 250 klb

Slack off = 200 klb

Torque = 23,000 ft-lb

Drilling parameters after pumping sweep

Pick up = 280 klb

Rotate weight = 230 klb

Slack off = 190 klb

Torque = 20,000 ft-lb

It is clearly seen that sweeping the hole helps hole cleaning.

Before (Image below)

After (Image below)