Vertical cuttings dryer (vertical centrifuge) and decanter centrifuge are major separation equipment for drilling mud and drilling cuttings treatment. A set of vertical cuttings dryer can decanter centrifuge are ready for shipment in GN Solids Control factory. They will be shipped to an international drilling company for waste management.

Vertical cuttings dryer in this project is GN latest model GNCD930E-VFD with advanced design. Mostly, fixed speed control is used for vertical cuttings dryer. For this project, client choose VFD control panel for the vertical cuttings dryer to control the rotation speed and G force.

Vertical cuttings dryer is also called as vortex centrifuge or vertical centrifuge. It is the major separation equipment to treat oil base mud and oil base cuttings. It can used to treat drilling cuttings discharged from shale shaker, desander and desilter. But it cannot treat drilling cuttings from decanter centrifuge. As decanter centrifuge is used for fine solids separation. GN Solids Control offers 3 options for screen basket opening of vertical cuttings dryer: 0.25mm, 0.35mm and 0.5mm. The soil cake from decanter centrifuge is too fine. They will all go through the screen basket. No solids can be removed while treat decanter centrifuge solids.

As the screen opening of vertical cuttings dryer is big opening. The solids control and mud weight will be high for the mud recovered from vertical cuttings dryer. In order to reduce the mud weight for reuse, decanter centrifuge will be used after decanter centrifuge for fine solids separation. Cut point of high speed decanter centrifuge is 2~5 microns. After centrifuge separation, the mud can be qualified for reuse.

Decanter centrifuge used in this project for the international drilling company is a big bowl model GNLW553C-VFD. It is a big bowl big volume centrifuge with VFD control panel for variable speed control. The big bowl centrifuge is usually used for waste management.