A review of different approaches for water-based drilling fluid filter cake removal

During the drilling operations, drilling fluids invade the drilled formations which could cause a plugging or permeability alteration in the reservoir zone and consequently additional cost to the drilling operations. Buildup of a thin impermeable layer toward a well's wall called the filter cake reduces this invasion. However, this layer must be removed afterward for a better cementing job and to eliminate any restrictions on hydrocarbon flow at the production stage. Filter cake layer composed mainly of particles of the weighting material, in this paper we highlighted the main challenges for water-based filter cake removal which contains barite, ilmenite, manganese tetroxide, and calcium carbonate as a weighting material. Many of the reported filter cake removal processes are multi-stage events because of the incompatibility of the polymer breaker with the removal solution, therefore, more researches need to be conducted to come up with an enzyme compatible with the removal fluids. We also recommend conducting more researches to investigate the effect of the presence of the carbonate or sandstone particles inside the filter cake formation on the removal efficiency and to study the removal performance at high temperatures.