After oil and gas well drilling, there are a lot of drilling fluids cannot be used, as the drilling job is finished. The drilling mud may come from the usual solids control equipment which is used for oil well drilling mud recycling system, like from shale shakers, desanders, desitlers, mud cleaners, designers, degassers. And in some oil well drilling rig sites, the drilling mud may come from the decanter centrifuge separation.
And the drilling fluids are hazardous to environment. They are not allowed to be discharged into environment directly. Clients need to treat the used drilling mud after drilling well finished. The solid equipment mentioned above are used for the circulation of drilling mud. But after drilling, there should be another separation equipment to treat the recovered clean drilling fluids. The new approach is to dewater the drilling mud after use of drilling mud to reuse water.
Drilling mud used in oil well drilling is recovered from solids control equipment like shale shaker, mud cleaner, desander, desilter and decanter centrifuge, there is no big size solids side the solids. The PSD (particle size distribution) is variable but around figure will be 30% of below 5 microns. If it is water base mud, the water content is around 80 ~ 90%. And the solids content is 10 ~ 20%. There is no oil for water base mud.
In this case, clients will need to do dewatering treatment to recover the water from drilling fluids for reuse. This is a conventional dewatering of water base mud to produce reusable water and the challenge is on the economic side as the effluent water must be of the same price compared to landed price to rig site of fresh water. After dewatering treatment, clients want to get Semi clear water with neutral pH reusable (water parameters still to be determind).
If you are interested for the proposals to dewartering the used drilling mud from oil well drilling, please visit the GN Solids Control website:
Or contact GN Solids Control sales engineers.