Drilling waste separation from the mud at the shale shakers may be coated with so much mud that they are unsuitable for the drilling mud recycle or disposal step or are difficult to handle or transport. Constituents of the drilling cuttings or the mud coating them, like oil or metals, may leach from the drilling waste, making them unsuitable for land application or burial requirements. Kinds of materials can be added to drilling cuttings to solidify and stabilize them.
Solidification is a technology that encapsulate the drilling waste in a monolithic solid of high structural integrity. The encapsulation may be of fine drilling waste particles or of a large block or container of drilling cuttings.
Solidification does not necessarily involve a chemical interaction between the drilling waste separation and the solidifying reagents but may mechanically bind the drilling waste into the monolith. Contaminant migration is restricted by vastly decreasing the surface area exposed to leaching and/or by isolating the drilling waste within an impervious capsule.
Stabilization is the technology that reduce the hazard potential of drilling waste by converting the contaminants into their least soluble, mobile, or toxic form. The physical nature and handling characteristics of the drilling waste separation are not necessarily changed by stabilization.
Usually, cement, fly ash, lime, and calcium oxide have been used most frequently during solidification/stabilization additives for treating drill cuttings and other types of drilling solids. A recent study tested seven other types of additives for stabilizing drilling cuttings and assessing the performance of stabilized drilling cuttings as a substrate for growing wetlands plants.
Usually the additives include medium-ground mica-based material, fine-ground mica, three different commercial mixtures of recycled cellulose fibers, walnut nut plug, and pecan nut plug. Various other commercial products with proprietary compositions have been marketed.
While not all drilling waste separation are amenable to chemical fixation and stabilization treatments. Solidification/stabilization should be adapted for site-specific applications depending on the end-use of the treated material and the chemical characteristics of the drilling waste. Laboratory tests conducted to determine the proper blend of additives to achieve the desired material properties is recommended.
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