Abstract
Mud cooling is a key technology in gas hydrate drilling operation. GHMCS (Gas Hydrate Mud Cooling System) proposed in this paper is a set of special equipment used to cool mud. The working principle, design calculations, and basic composition of the system are introduced in this paper. Laboratory experiments were carried out on the system to test its mud cooling effects. Field experiments were also carried out on the system in three gas hydrate drilling wells located in the Muli basin of Qinghai province, China. The experiments proved that the system not only achieved the goal of the design completely, but also met the mud temperature requirement of gas hydrate drilling.
