تنشيط خام البنتونايت بمحافظة خليص بطريقة الطحن الناعم

Abstract EN

Khulais region in Saudi Arabia has a big reserve of calcium bentonite which does not satisfy the request specifications of commercial bentonite.

Some studies has been done to activate this bentonite by addition of sodium carbonate in a wet condition but it gave low activation which are faraway from the required specifications.

In this work, the grinding energy was used in dry state to activate Khulais bentonite with different percentages of sodium carbonate.

Also a few percentage of a commercial certificated bentonite was mixed to obtain more activation.

The activation of bentonite was measured for the following properties: Free swell index; plasticity index; methylene blue value; cation exchang capacity; total surface area, filtration loss; density and apparent viscosity.

Then, the values of these properties were compared with the required specifications for drilling mud.

From the obtained results, this research work gave the following new approach.

The optimum conditions of Khulais calcium bentonite to become an active bentonite as near as possible to the specification of drilling mud are when it is mixed with 5% commercial certificated bentonite and 6% sodium carbonate in a grinding mill for one hour in dry state.