Solid Control & Drilling Waste Management Solution

During oil & gas exploration and production, there are lots of drilling cuttings  and fluid  generated. These drilling waste will leak into earth with time going which is great harm to surface and ground water and the surrounding environment even causes pollution, especially in sensitive area harmful to human health and life. Therefore, it is crucial important to drilling waste management before discharged. Here is a simple processing procedure for drilling waste management. The screw conveyor mounted under the shale shaker is used for collecting drilling cuttings from shale shakers and mud cleaners (desander or desilter), then convey the drilling cuttings to the H-G dryer for solid-liquid drilling waste management . There is one conical buried tank under the shale shakers for discharging mud and alleviate the grit in mud tank. Otherwise, if serious grouting off happened, the overflow mud will enter into the conical buries tank to prevent mud grounding. There i

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 exp

As the drill bit grinds downward through the rock layers, it generates large amounts of ground-up rock known as drill ing waste . The conventional process of drilling oil and gas wells uses a rotary drill bit that is lubricated by drilling fluids or mud. This section discusses several alternative drilling practices that result in a lower volume of drilling waste  generated. Usually wells are not drilled from top to bottom at the same diameter, but rather in a series of progressively smaller-diameter intervals. Oil and gas wells are constructed with multiple layers of pipe known as casing. The top interval is drilled starting at the surface and has the largest diameter hole with large quantity of  drill ing waste . Drill bits are available in many sizes to drill different diameter holes. The hole diameter can be 20" or larger for the uppermost sections of the well, followed by different combinations of progressively smaller diameters. Once a suitable depth has been rea

Drilling mud is pumped from the surface through the hollow drill string, exits through nozzles in the drill bit, and returns to the surface through the annular space between the drill string and the walls of the hole.  Drilling fluid is used to control subsurface pressures, lubricate the drill bit, stabilize the well bore, and carry the cuttings to the surface, among other functions. As the drill bit grinds rocks into drill cuttings, these cuttings become entrained in the mud flow and are carried to the surface. In order to return the mud to the mud circulating system and to make the solids easier to handle, the drill cuttings must be separated from the mud. The first step in drill cuttings separation  from the mud involves circulating the mixture of mud and cuttings over vibrating screens called shale shakers. The mud passes through the screens and is circulated back to the mud tanks from which mud is withdrawn for pumping downhole. The drill cuttings remain on top of th

Drilling waste is unavoidable consequence during  drilling operations. If the  drilling fluid  does not carry cuttings and cavings to the surface, the rig either is not “making hole” or soon will be stuck in the hole it is making. The drill ing   waste  that are separated from the drilling fluid on the surface by the s olids  control equipment  and some quantity of unrecoverable or economically unwanted drilling fluid are a major source of drilling waste. Drilled and formation solids that are sized smaller than can be removed by s olids  control equipment are often reported as drill solids. Some quantity of drill solids will accumulate in the drilling fluid and must be removed by the s olids  control equipment or reduced in concentration by dilution . Before the introduction of mechanical solids   removal equipment, dilution was used to control solids content in the drilling waste management . The typical dilution procedure calls for dumping a portion of the active drilling  

On Sept. 2 nd  of 2009, well YM7-12 was started to drill together with the complete set of drilling waste management  equipment operated, to uninterrupted while drilling processing the waste mud from the solid control system . On Nov. 2 nd  of 2009, the second section drilling finished. The complete system operated for a total time of 57 days, accumulative handling drilling waste mud 3450m³, including bentonite polymer mud 250m³, polymer mud 2225m³, polysulfonate drilling fluid -KC1-polysulfonate unsaturated salt water 975m³. After treatment and mud discharging, the water is 620m³, sand (drilling cuttings>5mm) 170m³, non-harmful mud clay 1150m³. Through monitoring and sample test to the mud clay and discharged water, all material during the whole operation reached to discharging standard. On May 5 th  of 2010, well Ha 702 was conducted a second time pilot test. This well is a three stage structure. The first drilling section is 419.1mm big wellbore, the second drilling section

2 D rilling waste treating non-landing target processing technology  theory 2.1 N on-landing t echnology theory The basic theory of “drilling waste treating non-landing target processing technology” is attenuation, flocculation and separation into three parts drilling cuttings, mud clay and fluid. That’s to say, through watering and flocculation separation and chemical reaction processing to let the drilling cuttings and mud clay reaching to discharge standard. The harmful elements and chloride ion is analyzed into water, and then formed into mud clay by vac-sorb or extrusion as well as realized useful fluid recovery. The whole craft contains three processing units. The first processing unit: complete collecting drilling waste mud and fluid. First separating the rocks and cuttings from the collected mud thorough sand-water separation-washing-agitating equipment for agitating washing and spiral separation to release or reduce the influence of such kinds of material to subs

E pisode I  Tarim Oilfield Drilling Waste  Treatment Current Situation Drilling cuttings is the main waste produced during drilling operation, including clay, heavy material, chemical treating agent, waste water, sump oil and drilling cuttings, and the kinds of polymer, heavy metal ion, salt, pitch and other modifying substance is harmful to environment. During drilling , each well generally produces about 800m³ drilling waste fluid, the drilling cuttings has no recovery value, only be piled up at wellsite mud pit, and the environment pollution is caused by hidden dangers. During recent years, Tarim oilfield oil and gas resources developed rapidly. And with the drilling wells quantity continuous increasing, the cumulative drilling waste has been placing a growing hazard to environment pollution. According to statistical data, in year 2009, the Tarim oilfield drilling waste reached to 130,000m³, including drilling cuttings about 50,000. While in year 2010, the drilling wast

Drill cuttings disposal is a hot topic these years with global attention to environmental protection, especially in O il & gas industry. D rill cuttings  disposal into environment without any treatment is strictly forbidden. So before disposal, a series methods must be introduced to treat the cuttings and make it reach to disposal standard. Drill cuttings are produced as the rock is broken by the drill bit advancing through the rock or soil; the cuttings are usually carried to the surface by  drilling fluid  circulating up from the drill bit   by  rotary ,  percussion , or auger methods. The drill cuttings are commonly examined to make a record (a  well log ) of the subsurface materials penetrated at various depths. In the oil industry, this is often called a  mud log .   One drilling method that does not produce drill cuttings is  core drilling , which instead produces solid cylinders of rock or soil.   In cable-tool drilling, the drill cuttings are periodically bailed o

  Drilling cuttings treating solutions will depend on the drilling mud characteristics. Oil-based mud is a mud  where the base fluid is a petroleum   product   such as diesel fuel , kerosene, fuel oil, selected crude oil or mineral oil. For OBM ’ s complexity, the drilling cuttings treating solutions will have more strict demands on  the processing  equipment. Oil-based mud are used for many reasons, including increased lubricity, enhanced shale inhibition, and greater cleaning abilities with less viscosity. Oil-based mud   also withstand greater heat without breaking down. The use of oil-based mud has special considerations, including cost, environmental considerations such as disposal of cuttings in an appropriate place, and the exploratory disadvantages of using oil-based mud, especially in wildcat wells. Using an oil-based mud interferes with the geochemical analysis of cuttings and cores and with the determination of  API gravity  because the base fluid cannot be distin