An investigation of the behaviour of polymer fluids in the American Petroleum Institute filter press

The American Petroleum Institute (API) filter press test has been used for decades in the construction industry as part of the quality control regime for bentonite-based excavation support fluids. The industry has carried over the use of this test to polymer fluids despite the lack of published evidence of its suitability for these fluids and the very different mechanisms by which polymer fluids and bentonite slurries achieve excavation support. This paper presents the first systematic investigation of this issue through a combination of laboratory testing and theoretical analysis. The investigation demonstrates the very different behaviours of bentonite slurries and polymer fluids. In contrast to the results for bentonite slurries, API filter press results for polymers are shown to be highly sensitive to the filter paper used. In particular, repeatability testing revealed a substantial variation in the polymer fluid loss rates attributable to three primary factors: (a) the filter paper pore size; (b) filter paper damage resulting from the applied test pressure; (c) apparent ‘clogging’ of the filter paper pore space. Furthermore, the study demonstrates the poor repeatability of the API filter press test for polymer fluids even when filter papers of the same type are used. Interestingly, analysis of polymer flow with respect to filter paper pore size and the applied pressure showed that the filter papers were behaving as porous media rather than a simple bundle of capillaries; their behaviour could not be modelled using a simple capillary bundle model. Importantly, this finding shows that the filter press may provide a rapid method of assessing the apparent viscosity of polymer fluids in porous media at high shear rates – data that cannot be obtained by rotational viscometry, and would otherwise require resort to permeameter testing of coarse soils. The investigation demonstrates that the filter press test is not useful for the on-site quality control of polymer fluids but, given the theory presented in the paper, it can be a useful laboratory tool that provides valuable insight into polymer fluid flow behaviour in soils of high hydraulic conductivity, the most challenging soils for polymer fluid support.