Zeolite-Enhanced Portland Cement: Solution for Durable Wellbore-Sealing Materials

Wellbore-plugging materials are threatened by challenging plugging and abandonment (P&A) conditions. Hence, the integrity and resilience of these materials and their ability to provide sufficient zonal isolation in the long-term are unknown. The present work focuses on investigating the potential to use zeolites as novel additives to the commonly used Class-H cement. Using four different zeolite–cement mixtures (0%, 5%, 15% and 30%, by weight of cement) where samples were cast as cylinders and cured at 90 °C and 95% relative humidity, the unconfined compressive strength (UCS) testing showed a 41% increase with the 5% ferrierite addition to the Class-H cement in comparison to neat Class-H cement. For triaxial compression tests at 90 °C, the highest strength achieved by the 5% ferrierite-added formulations was 68.8 MPa in comparison to 62.9 MPa for the neat Class-H cement. The 5% ferrierite formulation also showed the lowest permeability, 13.54 μD, which is in comparison to 49.53 μD for the neat Class-H cement. The overall results show that the 5% ferrierite addition is the most effective at improving the mechanical and petrophysical properties based on a water/cement ratio of 0.38 when tested after 28 days of curing in 95% relative humidity and 90 °C. Our results not only demonstrate that zeolite is a promising cement additive that could improve the long-term strength and petrophysical properties of cement formulations, but also provide a proposed optimal formulation that could be next utilized in a field trial.