Abstract: Techniques for identifying drill cuttings include drilling a wellbore; during the drilling, circulating a drilling fluid that includes a plurality of tracer pills, where each tracer pill includes a shell or coating formed of a thermoresponsive material and a tracer material enclosed within the shell; during the drilling, removing cuttings such that the cuttings become entrained within the drilling fluid; attaching the tracer material of the tracer pills to the cuttings entrained within the drilling fluid by releasing the tracer material from the shells; and circulating the drilling fluid including the cuttings with the attached tracer material through the wellbore and uphole toward a terranean surface.

Abstract: Some microcapsule forming systems include a first container containing a core material; a second container containing a shell material; one or more heaters in mechanical contact with the first and second containers; a first pair of syringe pumps operable to pump the heated core material from the first container to an encapsulation cell; a second pair of syringe pumps operable to pump the heated shell material from the first container to the encapsulation cell; a controller for controlling the one or more heaters and the first and second pair of syringe pumps; the encapsulation cell comprising a first nozzle disposed concentrically within a second nozzle, the first nozzle operable to form a sphere using the heated and pumped core material and the second nozzle operable to form a shell surrounding the sphere using the heated and pumped shell material to form a microcapsule.

Abstract: A microfluidic system (100) may include a set of replaceable microfluidic cartridges (3), each having a mechanically rigid box (202) and a set of parallel microfluidic capillaries (6), and a cooling system (216) that is in thermal contact with the mechanically rigid box (202). A gas stream may flow through the capillaries (6), and an aqueous fluid stream may flow through a space (5) in between an inner surface of the mechanically rigid box (202) and an outer surface of the set of capillaries (6). A method may include providing such a microfluidic system (100), introducing a gas stream through capillaries (6), introducing an aqueous fluid stream to flow through the space (5), generating gas bubbles (218) in the aqueous fluid stream through the capillaries (6), saturating the aqueous fluid stream with gas bubbles (218), recirculating the remaining undissolved gas through a dedicated contour tube and transferring the gas containing the aqueous fluid stream to an external storage unit.