A Drilling Cutting Derived Material for High Performance Borehole Sealing

Borehole sealing materials have drawn significant research attention for their applications in mine disaster prevention, efficient utilization of coalbed methane resources and green mine construction. However, it is still an enormous challenge to simultaneously achieve sealing materials with lower material consumption, lower expense, and lower labor intensity for high-performance long-term borehole sealing. Meanwhile, drilling cuttings (DC) possess large production amounts, low granularity, a large workload for cleaning out the alley, high labor intensity, and high transportation cost. Herein, a composite with universal applicability to DC has been developed, which can be combined with different DC to produce a low-cost sealing material with adjustable strength, fulfilling the sealing requirements of various boreholes. The properties of the sealing material can be adjusted as required by regulating the water/cement ratio and DC content to meet the sealing requirements of different boreholes. Consequently, the DC-derived materials, featuring adjustable strengths and lower usage, can reduce cement usage, material costs, and labor intensity dramatically, displaying great promise in high-performance borehole sealing, coalbed methane extraction and utilization, timely mining waste reutilization, gas disaster prevention, and green mine construction.