Cement is a funny thing. It can support the biggest skyscraper. It can take a pounding day after day on the busiest freeway. It can hold back massive amounts of water at a dam. Cement is considered the most reliable way to shore up and seal out water from penetrating well bore holes too because it is easy to inject and easy to control simply by mixing the right blend of cement for the conditions in the hole.

But, it can crumble into a pile of broken rocks in a matter of minutes if the mixture isn’t just right. Calculating the cement mixture is both an art and a science.

The art is that you have to understand the conditions the cement will be used in. This comes from years of experience in different drilling environments.

The engineers become artists when they know nifty ways to use additives, like accelerators (that shorten cement set time), retarders (that extend cement set time) and extenders (that expand cement so less is needed), to manipulate cement for any purpose, and when they understand and orchestrate special cements for deep, high pressure and corrosive environment wells, they are designing slurry masterpieces.

The science comes in when you have to calculate how much of each material is needed to go into the mixture to create the perfect blend of integrity and function. A small miscalculation can literally bring your project to ruin.

PVI’s new software product, CEMLab, makes cement slurry design easy. One feature includes the ability to customize the database variables to your specific needs, operating conditions and company specifications. If your cementing conditions change, you need CEMLab.

You can create your cementing masterpiece by inputting vertical depth, static temperature, circulating temperature and bottom hole pressure. You can consider solid and liquid additives and base fluids too. All are easily changed or updated with a click on the mouse.

You can calculate based on density, viscosity, slurry or blend, and even figure out your costs all with one click. The program will adjust and conform to your way of doing things. It truly is a work of art.

Even an engineer with experience in creating cementing masterpieces can use this software tool to make their work more precise. So leave the science to the software.