油田化学(英文)-第3章粘土稳定剂.pdfVIP

C h a p t e r 3 C l a y S t a b i l i z a t i o n The problems caused by shales in petroleum activities are not new. At the beginning of the 1950s, many soil mechanics experts were interested in the swelling of clays. It is important to maintain wellbore stability during drilling, especially in water-sensitive shale and clay formations. The rocks within these types of formations absorb the fluid used in drilling; this absorption causes the rock to swell and may lead to a wellbore collapse. The swelling of clays and the problems that may arise from these phenomena are reviewed in the literature [528,529,1788,1900]. Various additives for clay stabilization are shown in Table 3-1 . Properties of Clays Clay minerals are generally crystalline in nature. The structure of the clay crystals determines its properties. Typically, clays have a flaky, mica-type structure. Clay flakes are made up of a number of crystal platelets stacked face-to-face. Each platelet is called a unit layer, and the surfaces of the unit layer are called basal surfaces. A unit layer is composed of multiple sheets. One sheet is called the octahedral sheet; it is composed of either aluminum or magnesium atoms octahedrally coordinated with the oxy- gen atoms of hydroxyl groups. Another sheet is called the tetrahedral sheet. The tetrahedral sheet consists of silicon atoms tetrahedrally coor- dinated with oxygen atoms. Sheets within a unit layer link together by sharing oxygen atoms. When this linking occurs between one octahedral and one tetrahedral sheet, one basal surface consists of exposed oxygen atoms while the other basal surface has exposed hydroxyl groups. It is also quite common for two tetrahedral sheets to bond with one octahe- dral sheet by sharing oxygen atoms. The resulting structure, know