Last week, GN’s manufacturing department finished the fabrication of a mud mixing tank with double hoppers. Mud mixing tank is widely used in the drilling mud recycling system for mixing and re-configuration the drilling fluids. Also sometimes it will be used for storage the active drilling fluids.
A mud mixing system is always consisting of mixing tank, agitators, mud guns, mixing pump and mud hoppers. Generally, the mixing pump and the mud hopper will be located at one end of the mud tank to make the mixing tank system a compact and single unit, while in some projects, the mixing pump and hopper are installed on a separate skid so that the mixing tank and the jet mud mixer could be used much freely. The picture in this article shows that the jet mud mixer skid was located at one side of the mixing tank. There are one mixing pump and 2 mud
hoppers on the skid. The mixing pump is connected with both hoppers, one of the hoppers is used for mixing barite to make weighted drilling fluids, and the other one is used for adding bentonite into the drilling fluids.
There is a steel frame around second hopper with steel bars over the hopper. This horizontal steel bar is used to hang the bentonite bag which will be hooked at 4 corners of the steel frame to make it easier for adding the bentonite powder into the hopper. It is worthy to mention that the steel bar is with forklift lifting slot so that the bar with bentonite bags could be lift and put on the frame by a forklift to save human power.
This mud mixing system is with a control panel to control mixing pump which could transfer mud to both hoppers. On the mixing tank, there is another charge pump which is used to transfer the active mud back to the rig for reuse.