Drilling mud Equipment

All persons who ever been a drilling site will know that the solids control equipment like shale shakers are located on top of the mud tank. The shakers are fixed directly by bolts onto the mud tank top, if you want disassemble the system, you need loose the bolt and take off all the shakers units one by one which will cost much time.
GN Solids Control ever made several mud systems in which the primary solids control equipment are pre-installed on a framework, and then the framework whole package is put on the mud tank top. Just like below picture shows 2 unit GN’s double layers shale shakers in installed in a 20 ft container size framework, under the shaker base and on the frame skid, there are opening through where the drilling fluids could flow down to the mud tank.

What benefit this design would brought to the operator
1. Preinstalled shakers on the frame greatly save the time for assembling and disassembling, not bolt will be lost during the procedure of many times installation.
2. Container sized frame with container fixing point at all 8 corners of the bottom skid and top beam. This frame could be put directly on the flat bed trailer for easy transportation.
3. The horizontal and vertical beams and legs could be used as support of rain cloth to cover outside the frame for bed weather.
Actually, not only shale shakers could be pre-installed in this type framework, the decanter centrifuge unit can also be put in it. On the frame, there will be enough space for wire cables laying.

Framework is simple but it could bring convenience to operators. Besides this type frame, GN could also provide telescopic skid frame used to put decanter centrifuge and vertical cuttings dryer on that for waste cuttings management application. That type frame is little complex, however, it could make the equipment a modular package to meet customers’ requirements better.

Chinese traditional New Year will start from the February 8th 2016. It is known that China New Year is named with twelve kinds of animals, or we can also call it Chinese Zodiac. This year the animal is Monkey. All twelve Chinese Zodiac represents twelve kinds of human characters, while the Monkey emblems to be flexible thinking and dealing with affairs.

Spring Festival is the most important festival to all Chinese people, just like the Christmas in West and Hari raya for Islam. Chinese Spring Festival means reunion, so all persons working outside will go back home to see their parents, even the grandparents. All the brothers and sisters will stay together to enjoy the happiness and share their achievement in past year. Spring Festival means Reunion, Spring Festival means going home. Spring Festival means a new beginning.
GN’s employee comes from all corners of the country. Some or our guys will spend over 30 hours on the train home. In order to give everyone sufficient time to get together with their families, GN’s holiday started from February 3rd. February 15th is the first day for work in New Year. So, if you have any request, please make calls to our sales guys’ cell phone number. If you are GN’s old customer, you may have the cell phone number of right person. If you are a new customer, please call to our USA office at 713-878-0880.
In regards to the Monkey, China has a very classic TV series called Journey to the West telling a story of master and disciple total 4 persons who overcome thousands of difficulties finally arrive at the Ancient India to get Buddhist scriptures back to Tang Dynasty. During this story, the eldest disciple is a monkey who ever created a tremendous uproar in the heavenly palace and later converted to Buddhism to assist his master to get the scriptures. It is a very famous God evil spirit novel in China. Any interest on China history and Chinese myth, you can search and peruse it.
GN would like to share the happiness with all of friends coming from every corner of the world. I would like to used a very popular saying in Spring Festival as the end of this article – 恭喜发财!（May you be happy and prosperous!）

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.

Shaker screen users may know that there are flat type screen and pyramid type screen used very often on the shale shakers to separate the cuttings from the used drilling fluids.
The flat type shaker screen are very common in screen application, with 3 layers wire mesh stacked and closely connected with the steel back frame. Always there are hook strip type and steel tube frame type screen. Different from the flat type screen with a flat shape screen panel, the pyramid type screen is designed three dimensions screen panel like a wave. This pyramid screen design firstly issued by the world No. 1 solids control equipment manufacturer of Derrick Equipment. And they do have patent for this design.

Comparing with flat type screen, the pyramid type screen has below several advantages.
1. Make a larger effective screen area. Due to the wave type with top and troughs, in fact, the screen panel has a larger screen area than the flat type if the screen panels have same width and length. The pyramid screen let more drilling fluids distribute on the screen and more fluids will with solids less than the mesh will go through the screen.
2. Under the G force and gravity, the solids will accumulate at the troughs of the screen. Comparing with the flat type screen with solids distribute uniformly on the whole screen panel which will impede the go though the screen, the pyramid screen has the wave top and slopes at both sides will let drilling fluids come through.
3. The pyramid screen will make the fluids distribute as a much thinner layers which also helps to increase the flow rate and make the solids much dryer. And it can also separate solids around 3 meshes finer than the flat type screens.
These advantages pyramid screen will especially appear more clear when fed with larger volume drilling fluids that can submerge the screen panel. Thus the full screen effective area will be fully used.

Shaker Screen is one of the very often uses wear parts for drilling process. When starting the drilling process, the shaker screen is installed on the shale shaker unit to separate the solid particles in drilling fluids. The fine holes on screen panel could block the solids larger than the hole size, while the liquid could go through easily. On oil field, most of the shale shaker unit is using 3 or 4 panel screens. According to different condition of the drilling fluids and usage, the driller need make some inventory of the spare shaker screen.

It will be good to get the shaker screen from the original shale shaker supplier so long as you are willing to spend much money on it. There is another way to get the replacement screen from the OEC screen manufacturer. This would save a lot on the cost of spare screens, so that the drilling cost would be greatly reduced.
GN Solids Control, definitely, is one of the manufacturers of the shaker screens. With nearly 10 years experience in manufacturing the solids control equipment and shaker screens, GN now could provide the replacement shaker screen for Derrick FLC 500 and 48-30 series, replacement screen for Swaco Mongoose and ALC series. No matter hook strip or frame type, pre-tensioned or non-pretensioned. Many positive onsite level performance feedbacks proved the GN’s screen quality.
It is well known GN is a manufacturer who is keeping improving the technology. After several years’ research and kindly feedbacks from customer, GN has improved the technology on shaker screen fabrication, which greatly increases the shaker screen life time and reduce the processing cost. This directly leads to the reduction of the screen price. GN is willing to share the benefit with all the clients by quoted the full line screens with a 20-30% unit price reduction. That is really good news for the shaker screen requester.
GN is also able to provide the replacement shaker screen used on Cobra shaker, VSM300 shaker and FSI shakers. Besides, GN’s does have the screens for own shale shaker unit. If you have any request on the shaker screen, just call us to get more information.

Generally a solids control system will have all the 4 stages separation equipment for drilling cuttings and fluids. However, not all the equipment would have to be used when drilling. Hence, it will be better to design an overflow line for the drilling fluids on the mud tank to let the drilling fluids could flow bypass the equipment will not be used in some specific process.
In generally condition, the overflow line is designed as a U type slot on one side of the mud tank top. It is starting from the sand trap compartment of the mud tank to at least the suction tank where the high pressure mud pump could suck the active drilling fluids and transfer to the rig. As per customers’ requirements, this overflow line could extend to the drilling fluids mixing tank and storage tank.

Shale shaker, de-sander, de-silter and decanter centrifuge are seen as the 4 stages of solids control equipment which can finally separate out the cuttings with size down to 2-5 microns. In some solids control system, there will also have vacuum degasser located between the shale shaker and cyclone units. This degasser is used to remove the entrapped gas in the drilling fluids like CO2. However, this degasser unit is not used very often.
When the time no need start this machine, we can close the gate on the overflow line to the degasser sucking compartment, and then the drilling fluids could flow directly to the de-sander compartment after treated by the shale shaker. Even, sometimes then no need the cyclone unit, the drilling fluids could flow into the centrifuge feeding compartment. This always happens at the beginning time of the drilling as there is not much cuttings in the drilling fluids.
By opening or closing the gate between the overflow line and each compartment of the mud tank. The mud engineer could guide the drilling fluids flow so than do a better control of the solids control system. You know, turn off the equipment will not be used temporally will save a lot when drilling, and that is also a protection on the machine.
Knowing how the overflow line works would be much helpful for us to design the drilling fluids solids control system. Once the system arrives at the drilling site, this could greatly help to increase the working efficiency.

As the first solids control company in China getting vertical cutting dryer this year and the years to come, Hebei GN Solids Control Co., Ltd has been foremost the drilling waste management technology in China with the birth connected with complete drilling waste management system which are now portion in over 10 value packs around the world. Over three pieces are in Africa where our own after sales team is doing having service now, one arranged is in Cyprus for ocean going oil based drilling cuttings therapy. Eights sets are in Italy including four sets provided last December for Baker Hughes. Yesterday, the 9th drilling waste management system is delivered to Russia together with customized insulation covers to get winterization in Russia. It is evident that many solids control vendors in China can producer and provide vertical cutting dryer and drilling waste management system, and GN Solids Control is not the one on lowest price. What GN discover is the high quality at a cost-effective and competitive price. Here is why GN Solids Control finally win many jobs after customers visit every one of the suppliers in China.

The actual ninth set of drilling waste material management system to The ussr is designed to operate in frosty winter as it always is within Russia with a container as well as heat reservation cover. This specific sets of drilling waste materials management system totally consists of one set vertical cutting dryer with the G drive up to 750 at a twelve hundred RPM and flushing system to avoid blinding on screen basket and at liquids produce channel, two sets decanter centrifuge with one to get solids control the other for more waste treatment, three pieces screw conveyor with a couple of for feeding the up and down cutting dryer and one to get transporting dried powders, in addition to three sets screw pump with one for flushing and two for providing the decanter centrifuge.

One set 500GPM drilling mud recycling system was sent to Middle East for water well drilling. Besides the drilling mud recycling system for oil drilling, they also need drill water well for daily requirement for clean water. For the person living in Middle East, water is more important than oil. Sounds like a joke, but this is reality.
Water well is not so deep like the oil well, and the drilling cost is also very cheap comparing with oil drilling. However, both this 2 drilling processes need the drilling mud recycling system to speed up the drilling process and protect the drill bit. Water well drilling may not need the used drilling mud to be separated very clean as it is not requested strictly. Just like this 500GPM unit shipped to Middle East, it is a very compact
model, while it has all the necessary separation equipment.

It has one unit shale shaker GNZS703DZ with 3 panel screens which could remove out the solids always larger than 300 microns. This model is with the mud feeder on top of the shaker deck so that this shaker could be much more compact. As the water well drilling is always not so deep, hence, the solids coming out with the drilling mud is always not so hard. In this 500GPM mud recycling system, the de-sander cone is not equipped, but directly the de-silter cone would be used to separate the solids size of around 20 microns.
This 500GPM water well drilling mud system is a standard GN model GNMS-500G with 2 unit centrifugal pumps. One of each is used as feeding pump for the de-silter cyclone, and the other one is used for mud mixing, the mud tank is divided into 2 compartments. It has enough space for clean mud storage.
Though this 500GPM mud system is for water well drilling, it can also be used in other drilling project like HDD. As the working principle is completely the same. The customer killed two birds with only one stone.

Pitless means no need to dig a pit on the ground to collect the drilling cuttings. Nowadays, though the solids control system is widely used in oil drilling, some drillers still dig a mud pit on the ground to collect the drilling waste cuttings discharged out from the primary solids control equipment.
So long as the drilling rig is working, the solids control system has to be working all the time as the used drilling fluids is continuously coming out from the drilling well. With the issue of much strict environment protection regulation, the driller need find a solution to reduce the volume of the discharged drilling cuttings; in the meanwhile, much more drilling fluids could be recovered to reduce the drilling cost. And then they got a
conclusion, if I can establish a pitless drilling cutting disposal system, all the problems would be solved.

Pitless drilling cuttings disposal system requires a good connection between the traditional solids control system and waste cuttings management system. The most important is there should be a final solution on how to make the discharges environmental friendly. For the waste cuttings out of the shale shaker and cyclone unit, no matter water base or oil base. We have the high G force drying shaker and vertical cutting dryer unit to make the cutting much dryer so that more drilling fluids could be recovered. The recovered drilling fluids would be pumped
to a high speed centrifuge for separation of fine solids in the drilling fluids. After treated by the centrifuge, the drilling fluids would flow back into the storage tank for drilling reuse. The screw conveyor is used to transfer the drilling cuttings from shaker unit to the cuttings dryer machine. Therefore, it is no need to dig a mud pit, or at least, a large and deep mud pit on the ground to collect the drilling cuttings. We nearly realize
the pitless before the final disposal of the dry cuttings.
There are Thermal Desorption Unit and solidification unit could be used to dispose the cuttings from the high G force drying shaker and Verti G dryer. These 2 systems could make the cuttings none hazardous for environment. Finally, the pitless drilling cuttings disposal system is established.

All large capacity drilling projects such as oil gas drilling, no dig drilling for pipeline laying and water well drilling need drilling fluids when doing the drilling job. There is one type equipment naming shear pump that is an ideal choice for drilling fluids mixing. We could see the drilling fluids as the blood of the drilling equipment.

Here, how to make the drilling blood clean and let the blood perform well is so important to all the drillers. It is known that the drilling project need a drilling fluids recycling system, or we call it mud recycling system. Before start drilling, we need get the mud recycling system ready. On the other hand, we need the drilling fluids to be ready. The drilling fluid is a mixture of water/oil and some mud materials like barite, bentonite, and some other chemical agents. Among the various mud materials, the bentonite is the most important one and the consumption is quite big. Meanwhile, the bentonite is also a polymer which is difficult to solve into the drilling mud base.

Then how should we resolve this problem? Bingo! We need a shear pump. Thanks to the special design of the impeller, the shear pump could cut the polymer into very small pieces so that these materials could solve into the water easily. A high efficiency shear pump could make the consumption of bentonite reduce 30%. Oh my god! Really a large cost saving.

This is not the only advantage to use a shear pump to cut the polymers. Once the drilling started, the solids control equipment will also start running. When the used drilling fluid comes out from the well whole and flow into the shale shaker, the mud recycling process is beginning. If there is much long strips material in the drilling fluids, the screen will be blocked which leads to loss of polymers.
One thing the drilling fluids engineers need pay attention is the shear pump cannot run without fluids inside the pump. As you know, the shear pump is use centrifugal type pump, it need run with liquid to reduce centrifugal force so that the fluids can be transferred continuously. One more, the shear pump cannot be used to transfer used/active mud, as the cuttings in the used mud will definitely damage the pump parts.