Temperature Control of Drilling Fluid with Phase-Change Materials

The trend toward drilling deeper and consequently hotter wells places increasing demands on the electronics in the bottom-hole assembly. This article introduces and discusses the benefits and limitations of a new technology to reduce the temperature of circulating fluids in wellbores. This technology makes use of different versions of phase change materials (PCM), which make use of the latent heat of phase change to absorb the energy transferred to the drilling fluid from the formation or the drilling string.  A combination of mathematical and physical modeling is used to determine the temperature reduction that is can be achieved with conventional PCM.