The drilling fluids is nowadays widely used in drilling projects and under the strict regulation on environment protection, how to minimize the discharge of environmental hazardous waste solids and maximum the drilling fluids recovery is the mainstream topic among the industry.
The using of mud tank to store the drilling fluids coming back from the drill well has been widely accepted and recognized by all the drilling contractors. Without digging a mud pit on the ground greatly reduce the pollution to the soil. Especially for some limited job area, the mud tank would be the preferred choice for drilling fluids. The using of the various kinds of the solids control equipment highly speeds up the separation of solids in drilling fluids.
The closed loop drilling mud solids control system, if complete configuration, will include 2 parts. Drilling mud solids control and waste drilling cuttings treatment. The purpose of this 2 parts is same for minimize the discharge of environmental hazardous waste solids and maximum the drilling fluids recovery.
For solids control, after treated by the shale shaker, desander, desilter, even the decanter centrifuge. The ultra fine solids particles would be removed out from the drilling mud, and then active mud could be re-used.
The waste cuttings treatment part is functioned to recovery as much as possible the drilling fluids and make the cuttings dry enough for easy transportation to further environmental friendly treatment process. The cuttings out from the solids control shale shaker and desander, desilter would be transferred to drying equipment first. The drying equipment would be different according to water base mud or oil base mud is used. A high G force drying shaker would be better for water base drilling mud cuttings. The Verti G cuttings dryer, e.g. GNCD930 cuttings dryer could be used for both the water base and oil base cuttings drying. The drilling fluids out from the drying equipment would be pump into high speed decanter centrifuge for ultra fine solids separation.
By doing so, the drilling fluids would be maximum recycled and no discharge to outside of the tank system. The discharge drilling cuttings is dry enough for further treatment. Greatly guarantees the environment protection and high working efficiency.